Need for mobile application for disability assessment in India

INTRODUCTION: Disability can be by birth or by any tragic event in life or medical illness. Such differently abled persons can become a valuable asset to the nation rather than a liability if we properly quantify their disabilities and help them rehabilitate into jobs best suited for them. The aim of this study was to develop a mobile application for easy quantification of disability of a differently abled person according to the latest Government of India guidelines. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The Government of India Gazette notification of January 2018 spells out revised guidelines approved by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for calculation of disabilities of differently abled persons. These were first converted into a spreadsheet, workflow, and interface modules. Subsequently, they were coded into a mobile application using a simple web language. RESULTS: The result is an android App that can be downloaded from Google Play Store for free use. The rigorous testing of the App with all possible combination of input values was done to weed out errors. The results through the App were compared against manual calculation used as a control for validation purposes. CONCLUSION: To bring about uniformity, objectivity, ease in disability calculation for a large population of differently abled persons, a mobile App is truly justified.