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2008 Sponsors
Awards
2008 Award Winners
The nominations received for this years awards ceremony were outstanding and reflected how Europe really leads the way in innovation in the field of AT and ICT for people with disabilities and the elderly.
We have received more than 50 nominations from UK, Greece, Spain, Germany, Italy, Finland, Belgium and many other European countries.
The quality of them all was superb and the Selection Committee comprising of five (5) individuals with profound experience in the area of ICT and AT community had struggled actually to find the four (4) award winners, however, the final decision was made unanimously. In addition the experts felt that nine (9) more nominations should be recognised as ‘highly commendable’ as they all deserved recognition for their efforts. These nine (9) nominations received an award rewarding them for their efforts and hopefully motivating them to continue with their outstanding products/services and or projects.
The Winners of the 2008 ACCESS-IT awards are as follows:
The Assistive Technology Use Award was given to ASPIRE
(Supporting People with Spinal Injuries), lead the way with assisting people who have damaged their spine to recover or lead a full life. With four people a day in the UK sustaining a spinal cord injury, the need for support, rehabilitation and also the need to provide excellent living facilities and provisions to allow people who may be injured for up to 18 months at a time (if not more).
ASPIRE use a mixture of human to human rehabilitation and also a substantial amount of AT ICT for all the people. Real people producing real results. A deserving winner.
The Assistive Technology Innovation Award in Transportation was given to SMARTEYES
SMARTEYES achieved the highest points score in the nomination procedure and should be proud of what it has achieved.
SMART EYES is a product aimed at the visually impaired society, which as you read on, you will see the impact it will have the mobility of people with impaired vision.
SMART EYES targets spatial relationships between objects within the environment, information about position, direction, desired location, route, route planning etc., all of which are all bound up with the concept of navigation; a basic component in human way finding.
This is a step ahead of any other product currently on the market and once commercially launched SMARTEYES will look to change the lives of people who previously did not have such access to the outside world. A great project with great potential.
The Assistive Technology Innovation Award in the Work Place was given to Claire Jennings of the BBC
This award recognises the vocational aspect of the ACCESS-IT 2008.
Claire Jennings really fulfilled the criteria of this section as she has worked to ensured that access technology is integral to technical systems and processes. The software deployed via the servers thus ensuring that disabled people have the same flexibility to move from hot-desk too hot-desk as non-disabled people.
Claire has negated the need for the Access to Work process to ensure that everyone can provide the main access equipment, software and hardware from our stock, in the same way business technology is offered to non-disabled staff. In addition to this, Claire has trained the IT helpdesk staff in supporting access technology so that disabled people can just ring up like everyone else and receive a competent service without having to ring external suppliers for support. In addition to this Claire ensured that all the desktops and broadcast technology is accessible, before it is deployed (including the scripting and training). The list just goes on and on.
The Assistive Technology Innovation Award at home was given to SOPHIA
The SOPHIA project combines modern emergency call technology and video communication option, as well as an automatic documentation of individual activity at home (Movement impulses generate a 24-hour protocol). On the basis of all current data, a continuous and individual help is organized. A bundle of automatically produced alarms and messages (wearing or not wearing the security bracelet, deterioration alarm due to a motionlessness, hypothermia alarm, inactivity message due to significant low activity) increase the recognition of crisis situations.
The uniqueness of this project lies in the fact it has identified the needs of the elderly or for people with limited mobility and looks to enable them to live a more independent and fulfilling life.
Finalists
All nine finalists received smaller awards recognising their achievement. The committee felt that these nine should be rewarded for their outstanding efforts in the field of AT and ICT for people with disabilities and the elderly.
The nine finalists are as follows:
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ASK-IT
ASK-IT is a groundbreaking project, that is moving into its final phases, and is due for completion in December this year.
ASK-IT is an integrated EC funded project that is aimed at establishing an ‘Ambient Intelligence in semantic web enabled services.’ It is aimed at supporting and promoting the mobility of Mobility Impaired people, enabling the provision of personalised, self-configurable, intuitive and context-related applications and services and facilitating knowledge and content organisation and processing.
The ASK-IT device (consisting of a PDA &/or Mobile Phone) and system is designed to provide full travel accessibility for MI users in a reliable, seamless and viable way using a range of available technologies and communications networks. (including wireless internet networks & 3G networks)
ASK-IT was recognised by committee as a very strong nomination, due to the fact the project actually has a working prototype and working pilots. It has unlimited opportunities for people who live with varying disabilities and we are really looking forward to see how ASK-IT develops from a European venture into a global one.
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AHVIIT ACCESS
The vision of AHVIIT-ACCESS is to improve the inclusion of workers or trainees who are blind or visually impaired in vocational training programmes using visual materials, by delivering these in the non-visual format of touch and sound.
The aims of the project were: to design, produce and test pilot accessible learning materials as well as create an online training tool programme for teachers, using the T3 tactile and specially developed overlays.
AHVIIT ACCESS was seen by the committee as an excellent project and really welcomed its nomination. It showed great scope in assisting people with visual impairments gain vocational/educational training and also really gave each person an opportunity to gain employment. We know how disappointed The Royal National College for the Blind are for not winning an ACCESS IT award, however, we know this project will go far and has the potential to achieve great global success.
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SIGNIFICANT
Significan't (UK) Ltd is a social enterprise, set up by deaf people to address social exclusion. Significan't – "Sign if I can't" - has introduced the world’s first video contact centre outside the United States providing a sign language video interpreting service. Called SignVideo, it uses Internet Protocol (IP) technology to bring rapid interpreting access for deaf people.
What SIGNIFICANT saw was that deaf people using British Sign Language (BSL) face barriers in everyday actions like going to the doctor or visiting the local council. Believe it or not, research shows that 75% of deaf people who use BSL come away from a doctor’s visit not understanding everything that has been said resulting in repeat visits and/or further deterioration in the deaf person’s health.
Even though the services of BSL interpreters can be used, there are only around 451 fully qualified and registered interpreters in the UK making it virtually impossible to provide equal access for deaf people.
Significan’t addressed this problem by using the latest developments in video-technology to make scant interpreter resources available to more people, faster. It means that an interpreter no longer travel to provide BSL services; they enable a deaf person to have a conversation via a video link. This use of video combined with a BSL interpreter was a major step forward in helping deaf people, and is welcomed by both the service provider and deaf people.
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IMERGO
Imergo® is a software application framework that allows the testing of accessibility compliance of complex Internet portals. The tool is widely customisable and allows testing against different accessibility standards and legislations. The tool supports the public and private sector while improving the accessibility of their Internet presence thus increasing the access of people using assistive technology to the Information Society.
The product is the first tool developed in Europe and customised and localised to different national policy environments in the EU. Not only that, the tool allows as well access to developers with disabilities to the interfaces and results, thus enabling them to develop accessible Web applications.
An outstanding nomination and one that really stimulated some heated discussions when deciding on the winners. It was felt that this nomination really showed the way in how AT and ICT can go hand in hand and support one another in looking to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
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COMPUTER ART CLASSES
Ecas is an Edinburgh-based charity which promotes opportunities for physically disabled people to be self-fulfilled and to participate in all aspects of society. It runs, among other things, traditional art and computer classes.
The use of computer technology (CT) in art seemed to offer the chance for self-fulfilment for disabled artists by increasing control over artistic choices and providing for self expression with only minimal assistance required from others.
The really wonderful thing that struck the committee with this nomination was the amount of end user participation that was encouraged. The art classes are designed not just to discover the next van Gogh among us, but also offered an great way for people with disabilities to express themselves through art.
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JEAN HUTCHINS
Jean Hutchins's mission is simple - to spread the message that, far from leaving dyslexics languishing further behind their peers, information technology has the power to change their lives.
Jean Hutchins (72) became a founder of the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) Computer Committee (now known as BDA New Technologies Committee) in 1985. A teacher with immense experience and understanding of the condition, she is a true pioneer in the field of assistive technology.
Just to give you a further idea about Jean, she has recently come out of retirement to do the following:
- Rejoin BDANTC
- Organise BDA’s presence at BETT and The Education Show
- Support the BDA through her expertise and historical knowledge of the subject.
- Help devise best practice policy and procedures to enable the BDA’s publications to be made accessible to people with a reading impairment.
- Continue running the BDA Forum and BDA press, a dyslexia news service email list, as well as contributing regularly to a number of other email lists.
The committee today is recognising Jean for her dedication and real determination to help remove barriers that people who live with dyslexia.
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THE GRID 2
The Grid 2 is a pioneering development in the field of high-tech ACC (augmentative and alternative communication), bringing together voice output communication and access to computing.
For people with no speech (or limited speech), The Grid 2 will speak for you. You can choose what to say via many access methods – switches, touch screen, eyegaze, trackball, joystick, and more.
It is possible to compose your communication using symbols or text, and you have the flexibility to make personalised communication pages– with language tools such as prediction and speech feedback.
The Grid was a recognised name to many of the committee who all admired the work it has done. This is truly an outstanding development and deserves to be recognised today.
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NAVIGABILE
NavigAbile is an internet-based system aimed to provide an innovative way to access web content to children and youths affected by motor, mental and communicational disabilities. It offers a cluster of telecommunication services designed, on one side, to enhance web interface and content accessibility and, on the other, to supply communication and relation tools.
The NavigAbile services are tailored to support disabled people, especially if accustomed to use multimodal communication tools (alternative communication techniques based on the use of symbols, images and photos such as Augmentative Alternative Communication)
This was a really unique nomination and one that intrigued the panel of judges. From looking at the website and really seeing this in action the committee did not hesitate to identify NAVIGABILE for a finalist award.
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ACCESSIBILITY SYSTEM FOR HARD OF HEARING PEOPLE IN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS
With a very small amount of Spanish people from the hard of hearing community using ESL (Spanish Sign Language), standing at only 10% of the deaf community in Spain, it is virtually impossible to communicate if you do not have some standardized language for all to understand.
Moreover, some deaf people can read lips, but have several problems to talk, so the system allows them to use a synthetic voice to make easier this sense of communication.
A multiplatform system was implemented in order to avoid accessibility barriers between hearing and deaf community in educational environments. The system has a server-client architecture implemented with PC running under Windows XP and PDA with Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and Pocket PC OS.
The system has been developed to be used by individuals on a one to one basis and also for large events and conferences.
What was apparent with this nomination, is that the developers really thought carefully on how this product would impact the hard of hearing community. In a brief discussion earlier I was told how they research this community and saw how hard of hearing issues are considered a "hidden disability" and sometimes is very hard to get funding for projects or even the recognition that this disability deserves.