The Coolest Thing I've Ever Done
The Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Building an AI Learning Tool for Visually Impaired Children
By Ezra Wu | April 5, 2025
The Beginning: A Spark of an Idea
In October 2024, I saw the announcement for the Microsoft Imagine Cup. A thought flashed through my mind: What if we could really use technology to change the world?
The first prize was a whopping $100,000, but more than the money, what drew me in was the possibility of making a real impact.
How It Started: One Phone Call
My first teammate was a high school student I met during a competition in China. We weren’t close at first, but we shared a common interest: creating something meaningful for society.
We decided to focus on the visually impaired. Our initial idea was to develop a smart cane. But we didn’t want to guess the users’ needs—we wanted to understand them deeply.
We started by calling 50 blind massage centers in Yunlin and Changhua. These interviews gave us a glimpse into the lives of visually impaired people, but we wanted to go further.
With the help of a school professor, we were able to visit Huiming Blind School. There, teachers and students revealed the biggest pain point in Taiwan’s special education: learning resources are expensive and limited.
A Global Team
Interestingly, our project evolved into a truly international collaboration.
Our team spread across South Africa, Australia, India, Vietnam, and China, meeting weekly on Discord. Time zones, languages, cultures—every aspect was a challenge, but it made the journey unique.
I vividly remember our third full-team meeting. I was sipping Jin Xuan tea, thinking: Wow, I’m actually discussing how to help blind children with friends from all over the world.
The pressure was intense, but the excitement and sense of mission kept me going.
What We Built
We decided to develop an AI learning platform specifically for low-vision children. Think of it as a Notebook LM for the visually impaired, focused on auditory learning and personalized instruction.
The AI assistant can read content aloud, answer questions, generate quizzes, and even identify learning gaps to provide tailored suggestions.
We also built a content management system for teachers to create their own lesson databases and track each student’s progress, helping them move forward step by step.
Struggles and Challenges
Reality was far more complicated than our ideal.
The Microsoft resources we received ran out in the first month, and we had to cover all cloud costs ourselves. Cross-time-zone meetings were sometimes chill, sometimes high-pressure, often in the middle of the night, which took a toll on our bodies and minds.
By early 2025, I was diagnosed with depression. I hit rock bottom, constantly asking myself: Should I keep going?
But when I thought of the children we interviewed and the laughter, debates, and breakthroughs from our brainstorming sessions, I knew I couldn’t give up.
Together, we built the MVP. That moment, I genuinely felt: We are unstoppable.
Watch Our AI Project in Action
Check out our project demo video on YouTube:
Afterword: Connection and Continuation
Although we didn’t advance in the Imagine Cup, our project is now submitted to the 2025 BCM Social Entrepreneurship Competition. We are preparing a second visit to Huiming Blind School to continue improving the platform.
That friend from China still keeps in touch, sharing new tech ideas. Andy from Australia found a new job, yet we still reminisce about the nights we worked together until the early morning.
This experience taught me that projects aren’t about competitions—they’re about the people you want to help.
If you ask me the coolest thing I’ve ever done, I would answer without hesitation:
It’s building a tool with friends from around the world, for children who cannot see, that helps them see their future.