December 24th, 2012

Share Everywhere

Award-Winning New Apps for People With Disabilities

Vodafone

Augmentative communication between parents and children with autism, an updatable resource for accessible facilities in public spaces, keyword searches that are automatically adapted to accommodate a user, and a device for teaching smartphone technologies to people with disabilities were the four apps that earned first prize in the 2012 Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility awards, announced last week in Brussels, Belgium.

When the Vodafone Foundation launched the contest last year, with the support of the European Disability Forum and AGE Platform Europe, contest organizers said they hoped it would convince developers of mobile applications that “producing accessible and usable goods and services is a business case, not a good deed.” While that contrasts with the characterization of this year’s entrants by British technology writer and awards panelist Stuart Dredge found  on The Guardian’s “Apps Blog,” where he praised the 85 participating developers for “operating in an area where social benefits rather than lucrative sales or big-dollar acquisitions are the reward,” each of the four first place winners fulfilled the mission of making life matter more for people with disabilities by helping include these individuals into the mainstream as employees, consumers, and members of a community.

They also walked away with 50,000 euros apiece, which converts to about $66,000 in U.S. dollars. Not a huge payday by industry standards but certainly worthwhile compensation for the time and effort invested by these companies.

The backstory for the Ablah app that won the Wellbeing category sounds fascinating. Juan Carlos Gonazalez Montesinos wanted to foster a better connection with his five-year-old son, who is autistic. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the website’s translation tool convert the FAQ page to English from its original Spanish (“ablah” is a reconfiguration of the Spanish word “habla,” which means “speak”) to see if there was more information. But Dredge’s writeup makes plain the value of Montesinos’ visual augmentative communication app:

… [E]ach user can customise with their own pictures, words and sounds, whether it’s for a child to use to ask for something, or for a parent to explain to the child their plans for the day.

The two runner-ups in the Wellbeing category provide assistance to people with disabilities in crisis situations. Another product of Spanish innovation is 112, designed by Pablo Miguel Fernandez Perez and Carlos Andres Fernandez Perez to help people with hearing impairments quickly communicate their location and other details to emergency services; while the Italian engineer Marco Forlin’s app called Fontrillo enables users to place an SOS call with a simple shake of the device. With emergency preparedness so much on the minds of Americans after Superstorm Sandy, perhaps these or similar apps will make their way across the Atlantic.

We’ll look at winners in other categories later this week. But in the meantime, Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate tomorrow’s holiday!

Image by mwiththeat (Matt Wakeman).

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