Meta Accessibility Hackathon Jury

Meta-Funka Accessibility Hackathon

The Meta-Funka Accessibility Hackathon took place a couple of days ago. For this year's edition I was invited to be on the jury to evaluate the three finalists. It was a very enjoyable afternoon and a new experience for me. It was great to hear the opinions of those with far more expertise in the area of accessibility.

The lucky winner was Sofja Isačenkova, from Turība University in Riga, Latvia for her idea of the "Infigence" app, designed to assist people with neurodivergence in everyday tasks. As stated in the announcement, the jury felt:

“Infigence proposes a good balance between existing features and creating an open architecture for adding innovative new solutions. This ability to personalise features to tailor them to an individual is compelling and particularly useful for the neurodivergent community. The judges all agreed that this proposal could truly be made into a real product in the future”.

Of course, the other two finalists also presented very interesting ideas seeking to help persons with disabilities in their everyday lives. Both were from the Rovira I Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain. One was the "Slify" app, a lightweight electronic device intended for people with sever hearing and visual sensory disabilities, that would translate any type of text and information from their surroundings into braille. The other the was a sign language translater for recording and translating to and from sign languages.

Well done to all participants, to the finalists and especially to Sofja! 👏👏👏