His words form slowly and painstakingly on the screen in front of him. You wait, looking over his bent shoulder, admiring the grit that shines through his effort. "I want to help the non-speaking physically disabled of India. I want to start a centre for communication this year," he finally completes his sentence.

It takes 23-year-old Sayomdeb Mukherjee over a quarter of an hour to type these words on a computer, using nothing but his eyes because they, along with his tongue, are the only parts of his body that he can control. The rest of his frame, ensconced in a wheelchair, is prey to motor-neuron dystrophy, a condition that has left him unable to carry out even the most basic of human functions.

Sayomdeb has been a student of Kolkata's Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy - a pioneering effort that has touched the lives of thousands of those with cerebral palsy. In 2004, the institute turned all of 30. The journey began in 1974 as an impassioned initiative of the mother of a young boy with cerebral palsy and three of her friends. They began work on a centre for special education with just two students - Arjun and Mithu. Initially named the West Bengal Spastics Society, it was first housed at the Ballygunge military barracks in South Kolkata and the beginning was fraught with uncertainties. "We were a motley group of four - an insurance agent, Junie Bose, two home-makers, Reena Sen and Ranu Banerjee and I, a librarian. How were we to run a special education centre?" remembers founder-member and now, executive director, Dr Sudha Kaul.

A Kashmiri by birth, Dr Kaul had come to Kolkata after her marriage - the city has been home since. It is here, years ago, that she found her real calling when a personal crusade became a pioneering movement. Apart from finding professionals from India and abroad, to help them set up the facilities, she and the group began to master various aspects of special education, training and communication. Dr Kaul pursued a specialisation in augmentative and alternative communication and today is the chairperson of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC), the first Asian to be elected to the position.

Dr Kaul has ensured that the organisation focussed on being "sensitised, yet professional." It is not a "charity" or an organisation seeking to "do good" for the community. "We are not a group of people doing things for people. We are people working with people to enable an equitable environment," adds Dr Reena Sen, now IICP training and research director. "The context and scope of our work has changed with time and today, we stand on a platform where human rights is our focus."