Saskatoon student receives national recognition for innovative braille device

Watching his grandfather begin to lose his hearing sparked a passion in Joti Gokaraju to support the deafblind community and the idea for an invention that would earn him a national award.

Gokaraju, a Grade 11 student at Walter Murray Collegiate in Saskatoon at the time, grew concerned about how his grandfather would communicate the hearing condition worsened.

"That's what really started, you know, my passion for helping the deaf blind community, because I found out that it's not just my grandfather who could suffer from this situation," Gokaraju said.

That passion led him to create TouchTalk, a braille-based communication system that is now the winner of a 2025 national Ingenious+ Award.

"There are about 160 million deafblind people around the world who face this exact same problem," Gokaraju said. "I just wanted to make sure that these people have a way to connect with their communities and their families."

With TouchTalk, deafblind people receive and send messages through braille, inputting text through a computer app that translates the message into braille for the TouchTalk's physical display.

Gokaraju has just finished the preliminary testing for TouchTalk. He said he built the device for under $100, while similar products on the market usually cost much more.

"The most common technology right now costs about $5,000. And if you think about how a lot of deafblind people aren't in first-world countries, having that low cost is really important," Gokaraju said.

Youth leading innovation 

Ingenious+, run by the Rideau Hall Foundation, seeks out creative solutions to complex challenges when selecting its finalists. Amy Mifflin-Sills, a director at the foundation, calls it "innovating for good."

"With Joti, what he's done so far with his innovation is a clear example of innovating for good," Mifflin-Sills said.

The Ingenious+ Award is open to youth aged 14 to 18 with projects focused on innovation in areas like community and civic engagement, climate change, equity and inclusion, health, technology and entrepreneurship.

"There are amazing ideas out there and incredible prototypes, just like Joti's. Our goal is to support as many of them as possible every year through financial awards, mentorship and learning opportunities," she said.

"To give them that initial seed money so they can get started and move forward with their innovations. Ideally, we want to help them reach commercialization, move beyond the testing and prototype stages, and even take these projects with them as they go on to college or university." 

Servicing his community

Gokaraju credits much of his success with TouchTalk to hands-on work from researchers at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, whom he connected with to learn more about issues with blindness and deafness. 

"It's been really nice to actually get some field testing done," Gokaraju said.

His work in blind and deaf communication was also recognized by the Loran Scholars Foundation, which awarded him with a four-year scholarship valued at more than $100,000.

"It's also nice to, I guess, feel that your innovation has also been recognized, and it's something I think can go forward and I can actually make a company out of it to do something meaningful." 

Gokaraju hopes more young people become inspired to create solutions to the world's problems.