Our vision is of a world in which all children and adults with deafblindness become contributing members of society

Established in 1997, Sense International India (also known as Sense India) provides specialised services which enable children and adults with deafblindness to overcome the challenges caused by deafblindness and become active members of the society. With its technical know-how on deafblindness and unique model of expanding services with a network of grass-roots organisations, Sense India has reached out to 78,000+ children and adults with deafblindness in 23 states through 60 educational and rehabilitation projects across India. Deafblindness is a unique and complex condition in which a person may have a combination of hearing and visual impairments causing severe communication, developmental, and educational needs

People with deafblindness invariably face severe isolation and discrimination owing to their inability to communicate and relate to the world. The estimated population of persons with deafblindness in India is 500,000.

We are the first and only non-governmental organisation to support the development of comprehensive services for people with deafblindness throughout India. Sense India works with local, regional and national organisations to develop sustainable services for children and adults with deafblindness and we collaborate with the government at central and state levels.

Our Head office is in Ahmedabad and we have offices in New Delhi and Bangalore and staff based out of Chennai and Goa. We have provided high quality baby-screening and referral, home-based, education and other services to around 15,783 children with deafblindness through 60 partner NGOs in 23 states; as well we support skills and livelihood training to adults with deafblindness. We provide training and network to families to understand and integrate with their deafblind members. We also train educators and professionals to provide quality support.

Through collaboration with the government’s national ‘inclusive education’ Samagra Shiksha (SMSA)1 programme, we enable a further more than 63,500 children with deafblindness and multiple disabilities to access education.

We advocate for the rights of people with deafblindness with the government and the biggest achievement has been recognition of ‘deafblindness’ in the recently passed ‘The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016’. For the first time in history of India, deafblindness is recognized as a disability and rights of persons with deafblindness are now protected. Inclusion and implementation of vaccination for Rubella under the Universal Immunization Programme is another significant achievement of our advocacy initiatives. We are a member of several Central Government and State level advisory groups.

We are accredited to the United Nations: Due to our nation-wide initiatives, we now have consultative status on deafblindness.

Sense India is supporting work outside India. We are partnering with leading organisations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Malaysia to train educators and setup needs based services for deafblind.

We are registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act and hold a 50% exemption certificate from Income Tax u/s 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961.