Georgia State Student Develops Decision Support App for People With Disabilities

ATLANTA — A new app co-developed by a student in Georgia State University’s IDEAL program aims to empower people with disabilities by offering them personalized decision support.

Let Me Do It, which was developed by Angad Sahgal and his father, Amit, is designed to help people with developmental and intellectual disabilities lead more independent lives. The app uses a customizable decision tree and task management framework to support decision-making in a range of areas, from everyday tasks to larger decisions about finance, education, careers and housing, to name just a few examples.

“As a person with a disability, entrepreneurship has allowed me to pursue my dreams and pave the way for the next generation of disabled entrepreneurs,” Angad Sahgal said. “I know what it means to work with limitations and turn them to opportunities.”

Let Me Do It was one of several companies to recently receive funding through the Main Street Entrepreneurs Seed Fund administered by GSU’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute. Sahgal is a student in GSU’s Inclusive Digital Expression and Literacy (IDEAL) program, which is housed in the Center for Leadership in Disability within the School of Public Health. He credits the program with giving him “the confidence to experiment and learn, a key ingredient in the entrepreneurial journey.”

Several members of the Sahgal family run or are involved in startups, and Angad has served as Georgia’s Youth Ambassador for the Center for Youth Voice, Youth Choice, which is a national resource center on alternatives to guardianship. “We developed this app to empower people to have the capability to make their own decisions,” Angad Sahgal said.

Let Me Do It received its first round of funding from Synergies Work, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that connects entrepreneurs with disabilities with the resources they need to launch, grow and scale their businesses. The funding from the GSU Main Street Entrepreneurs Seed Fund is enabling the Sahgals to further refine and expand the app.

Amit Sahgal notes that while the initial version of the app is focused on providing decision support for people with Down syndrome, autism and other developmental and intellectual disabilities, the ultimate goal is to expand to address the full range of disabilities, including visual and physical impairments. Let Me Do It also analyzes data to help businesses better understand and cater to the diverse needs of people with disabilities.

“The idea is not to stop at any disability,” Amit Sahgal said. “There are 61 million people in the U.S. with a disability. If we reach even 3 percent of them, then we have made a meaningful difference in the lives of 1.8 million people.”

To learn more about Let Me Do It, visit https://eni.gsu.edu/mainstreet/let-me-do-it/.

Writer: Sam Fahmy, [email protected]