The winning app in the Independent Living category of the 2012 Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards was also the most highly-rated entry of the entire competition, according to one of the judges, Stuart Dredge, in his recap for The Guardian‘s Apps Blog. One look at the amount of content it puts at the fingertips of people with disabilities, and it’s easy to see why.
The Happen app by Airsign Technologies provides accessible news, weather, sports scores, and stock quotes. Different navigation modes support individuals with motor-based disabilities; while people with different degrees of visual impairment will appreciate the large text, customizable color themes, and complete spoken feedback of all the content, which, as was mentioned in the previous posts, is a lot.
The three top daily newspapers of Great Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, and Italy are all available with the Happen app, putting current events and expert analysis at the users’ fingertips. Check out the video tutorial that is part of the Google download page, which also uses assistive technology:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqzHpI2a954]
A runner-up to Happen also utilizes text-to-speech technology, but IDEAL Group Reader by the Android Development team also uses speech recognition to highlight passages and organize notes, making it a great tool for students who have visual impairments or learning disabilities like dyslexia. An amazing 25 different languages are programmed into the IDEAL, meaning as long as any book is available in that language it is accessible through this e-reader.
The other Independent Living runner-up is designed to make a person’s smartphone into a hearing aid alternative. Designed by Quanti s.r.o. of the Czech Republic, the Hearing Aid — Cochlear App enables people with hearing loss to amplify a person’s voice as well as filter out background noise for better clarity.
Hearing Aid costs $0.99 while IDEAL and Happen are both free apps. All are invaluable for making life matter more for people with disabilities, as well the entries in the Mobility and Wellbeing categories. The ability to access the same information and to engage directly with people in the community are critical for any individual’s effort to live independently, and the fact that two of the three apps are equally useful to people without disabilities shows how technology levels the playing field.
We’ll wrap up our review of the 2012 Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards tomorrow with a look at the finalists for the Social Participation category. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Image by Dru Bloomfield.