The winners of the AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards 2017 have been announced at the seventh annual awards ceremony in London.
The AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards are organised by national charity AbilityNet and sponsored by BT, and highlight the wealth of charities, businesses and volunteers across the UK that use digital technology to improve other people’s lives.
Dyslexic Aid scoops BT Young Pioneer Award
The winners included year ten school pupils Kiera McKillop and Sinead McKeown, who won the BT Young Pioneer Award for creating the Dyslexic Aid, which helps children who are struggling to learn because of dyslexia.
As sponsors of this year’s awards, Recite Me attended the awards ceremony yesterday (11 July) at BT Centre, London.
They joined more than 200 other people who came together to celebrate these amazing people who use digital technology to make the world a better place for other people.
Recite Me is a web accessibility solution that was designed to help people with learning difficulties like dyslexia, and other disabilities, so we were particularly inspired by Dyslexic Aid.
We truly understand the impact of dyslexia
There are 13 million people in the UK with a disability or learning difficulty, and Recite Me’s CEO and Founder Ross Linnett is one of them – he was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was studying at university.
After finding problems with old web accessibility software he realised the need for cloud based web accessibility software that works across any PC, Mac or mobile device and founded Recite Me in 2011.
“Congratulations to all the AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards 2017 winners – it’s a great achievement for each of them.
“The AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards are really close to my heart, and I’m thrilled for Recite Me to be a sponsor of this year’s awards.
“Digital technology has a huge role play to play in shaping the future of our world by solving every-day problems that millions of people face.
“These awards are a force for good that illuminate the life-changing work that is being done here in the UK.
“It’s great to be able to support AbilityNet to recoginse the amazing things people across the UK of all ages are doing with digital technology to help other people.”
The AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards 2017 winners:
AbilityNet Accessibility Award:
Bristol Braille Technology is building a revolutionary and radically affordable Braille e-reader for blind people called Canute, designed with and by the blind community. The Canute is the world’s first multiple line Braille e-reader, forty characters per line by nine lines, and it will be affordable too. They want to be able to sell it for the price of a Perkins typewriter or iPhone. This would make it 20 times cheaper than existing digital Braille devices.
BT Connected Society Award:
Sky Badger finds educational, medical, financial and social support for families with disabled children all over the UK. Over the last five years, Sky Badger has supported over 1.02 million disabled children and their families. With 981,958 visitors to its website and over 17,470 fans and followers on social media, it is clearly reaching lots of people.
BT Young Pioneer Award:
Year ten school pupils Kiera McKillop and Sinead McKeown from Killian’s College created the Dyslexic Aid, with a very limited budget, by using a Raspberry Pi computer. They have used their technical knowledge, skills and enthusiasm to design and make a device that helps children who are struggling to learn because of dyslexia.
Comic Relief Tech4Good for Africa Award:
In South Africa, Praekelt.org’s Maternal Health Platform connects more than a million pregnant women and new mothers to vital services and information through the National Department of Health’s MomConnect programme. Launched in 2014, so far it has sent out over 54 million messages to millions of women, with 95% of clinics in the country signed up to the service.
Community Impact Award:
Chatterbox is an online and in-person language tutoring service, delivered and developed by refugees. It brings together refugee talent with people and organisations that need people with excellent language skills. Since starting up in August 2016 they have supported more than 30 refugees with aspirations to rebuild their professional lives in the UK.
Digital Health Award:
Both of Vicky Coxhead’s sons have Cystic Fibrosis and because of this they have to do regular physio to keep infections at bay. She applied to feature on a a new BBC2 documentary asking for families with a problems to get in touchand was introduced to Haiyan Zhang, who volunteered to help. Haiyan works as Innovation Director at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. She enlisted the help of Creative Technologist Greg Saul to create a device that could take the boys’ breaths and turn them into controls for a videogame. Together, with Lee Stott at Microsoft UK, they organised hackathons where volunteer designers and engineers from across the UK came along to make new video game accessibility experiences for the Coxhead boys.
Digital Skills Award:
FabFarm! is a digital aquaponic farm that is designed, built and operated as a social enterprise by disabled students in Derry, N.Ireland. Developed by the Nerve Centre, FabLab, it uses new and emerging technologies to help empower, engage and inspire young people with special educational needs to develop new skills which are directly focused upon their employability in the digital marketplace.
Tech Volunteer of the Year Award:
Simon Cook started volunteering for Centra Group five years ago. Since then this digital champion has managed to set-up IT equipment in 52 sheltered housing schemes across London, and as far-a-field as Norfolk and Telford. His achievements are astounding, and are driven by his absolute determination and perseverance to use tech for good. In the beginning, it was difficult to get elderly residents involved in the IT projects, they were wary of him and the new technology. But, he has won them over and now runs a computer club four days a week that supports more than 30 people.
Tech4Good People’s Award:
C The Signs was chosen as the winner of this award by the general public. The public were encouraged to read about each finalist and their entry on the AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards website and vote for their choice for the People’s Award by sending a tweet using a dedicated hashtag.
You can read more about each winner and all of the finalists and their entries on the AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards website.
