When we talk about edtech companies transforming Indian education, the conversation too often stops at screens, apps, and broadband. But what about the 8 million+ students with visual impairments in India — do the promises of digital learning reach them too? A handful of purpose-driven edtech companies are finally asking that question out loud, and Next Skills 360 is building the answer.

What Sets Truly Inclusive EdTech Companies Apart

Genuine inclusion in education technology means more than adding an accessibility toggle or meeting a compliance checklist. It means designing from the ground up with the most underserved learner at the centre — not as an afterthought, but as the starting point. Too many edtech companies treat accessibility as a retrofit: a feature added after the core product is built, rarely tested with actual users with disabilities, and even more rarely adopted in real classrooms. Disability-first design, by contrast, produces tools that work better for everyone — a principle sometimes called the curb-cut effect. India's policy environment is now creating real tailwind. NEP 2020 explicitly mandates inclusive education, and the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan has a dedicated inclusion cell working to bring children with special needs into the mainstream learning fold. For edtech companies willing to go beyond the obvious market, this is both a moral imperative and a structural opportunity. The most impactful companies are those that solve hardest problems first.

The Coding Gap: Why Visually Impaired Students Are Left Behind

Computer science and coding education has a structural accessibility problem. Almost every popular platform — block-based drag-and-drop environments, colour-coded visual interfaces, mouse-driven IDEs — is designed around sight. Screen readers, which visually impaired students depend on, are largely incompatible with these tools. The result is a near-total exclusion of blind and low-vision learners from one of the most important skill areas of the 21st century. For IT and CS department heads in inclusive mainstream schools, this creates an impossible situation: they are expected to deliver coding curricula to all students, but the tools they have simply do not work for students with visual impairments. Special schools face the same gap with even fewer resources. State inclusion cell officers under Samagra Shiksha see the policy mandate clearly — but workable, scalable solutions are scarce. This is not a small problem. Next Skills 360 has already impacted 500+ students with disabilities through its inclusive skilling programmes since 2020 — a number that reflects both the depth of the unmet need and the early scale of purposeful intervention.

How ProGame Tactile Plus Bridges the Accessibility Gap

ProGame Tactile Plus is NS360's purpose-built answer to the coding accessibility gap. It is a browser-based, block-based programming environment designed specifically for students with visual impairments, built from the ground up for accessible navigation using assistive technology — including screen readers and full keyboard navigation — with no reliance on sight at any stage of the learning experience. This is not a generic coding platform with accessibility bolted on. Every design decision in ProGame Tactile Plus begins with the blind or low-vision learner in mind. It is designed for students in Classes 5 and above, making it appropriate for upper primary and secondary levels in both special schools and inclusive mainstream schools. ProGame Tactile Plus sits within NS360's broader Inclusive Skilling suite, which offers a complete learning pathway: ProGame Tactile, an audio-first Android app for introductory coding; ProGame Tactile Plus, the browser-based programming environment; and ProGame Tactile Pro, which takes students from Class 8 onwards into Python programming at a vocational and career-ready level. Together, they offer a structured, progressive route from foundational coding to employability.

NS360 Among India's Leading EdTech Companies for School Skilling

Next Skills 360 EdTech Private Limited is an Indian K-12 edtech company founded in 2020 and headquartered in Hyderabad. Its mission spans coding, AI, future-ready skills, and inclusive skilling for school students across India. The scale NS360 has achieved in a short time speaks to the credibility and replicability of its approach. Since 2020, the company has been deployed in 1,200+ schools across 12+ Indian states, impacted 240,000+ students, and trained 10,000+ trainers and educators. Its flagship ProGame Kit holds a granted patent in India and was the subject of a Harvard Business Review case study titled "Teaching Coding Without Computers" (HBR case study W37092). NS360 has earned 12 international and national recognitions, including selection as an MIT Solver, the AI for Humanity Prize from the McGovern Foundation, and the ElevatED Award from Dell Technologies India and MeitY. For school leaders and government officials evaluating edtech companies for large-scale deployment, this combination of proven reach and independent validation is a meaningful differentiator.

What School Leaders and State Officials Should Look For

When evaluating coding tools for visually impaired students, IT and CS department heads and Samagra Shiksha inclusion cell officers should move beyond brochure claims and ask practical questions: - Is it screen-reader compatible out of the box? ProGame Tactile Plus is built for assistive technology navigation — it does not require workarounds or special configurations. - Does it require device procurement or lab infrastructure? As a browser-based platform, ProGame Tactile Plus reduces infrastructure dependencies significantly. - Is it designed for the right age group? Yes — ProGame Tactile Plus is designed for Classes 5 and above, aligning with upper primary and secondary curricula. - Is teacher training practical and included? NS360's track record of training 10,000+ educators demonstrates a deployment model built for real classrooms, not just pilot labs. - Can it scale to district or state level? NS360's presence across 12+ states and 1,200+ schools shows it is built for system-level deployment, not just isolated pilots. These criteria separate genuine inclusive tools from surface-level compliance.

Building an Inclusive Future: The Road Ahead for EdTech Companies

The next frontier for edtech companies in India is not simply vernacular content or low-bandwidth delivery — as important as those are. It is zero-exclusion design: ensuring that no learner, regardless of ability, is structurally locked out of the skills that will define economic participation in the decades ahead. NEP 2020's inclusion mandates and Samagra Shiksha's dedicated funding streams provide the policy and financial infrastructure for this shift. What has been missing is purpose-built, India-relevant technology that works in real school conditions — in special schools, in inclusive mainstream classrooms, and at the scale of state-level rollouts. NS360's Inclusive Skilling suite, anchored by ProGame Tactile Plus, represents what that technology looks like when it is designed with intention. It is not a global platform adapted for India. It is built here, tested here, and already delivering results across the country. As India accelerates towards its goal of an equitable, future-ready education system, the edtech companies that will matter most are those solving for the learners who need it most.

Is your school or institution ready to make coding truly accessible? Request a free demo of ProGame Tactile Plus and discover how NS360 is helping visually impaired students in Classes 5 and above learn programming through assistive-technology-friendly, browser-based tools. Visit nextskills360.in or write to us to schedule a pilot.

Is your school or institution ready to make coding truly accessible? Request a free demo of ProGame Tactile Plus and discover how NS360 is helping visually impaired students in Classes 5 and above learn programming through assistive-technology-friendly, browser-based tools. Visit nextskills360.in or write to us to schedule a pilot.