Access For All

RoboBraille is named winner at the BETT Awards in London – the prestigious annual recognition of excellence in educational ICT. The Danish team behind the danish e-mail service RoboBraille won the prize together with the British partner The Royal National College for the Blind (RNBC) who took the prize. Among the nominees were strong combatants such as British BBC.
The RoboBraille service is an email-service capable of translating your documents to and from contracted Braille and to synthetic speech.
You use the RoboBraille email accounts by submitting a document (e.g., a text file, a Word document, a HTML page) as email attachment. The translation is returned to you via email, typically within a matter of minutes. All files are handled confidentially and they are deleted from the server as soon as your translation is done.
The RoboBraille service is available free of charge to all non-commercial users.
The BETT Awards is an annual scheme that highlights exemplar digital products intended for the education marketplace. The event is produced by Emap Connect, the organiser of the largest educational technology show in the world – BETT. The BETT Awards is made possible by working in association with Becta, the Government’s lead agency for ICT in education, and BESA, the trade association representing the educational supply industry.
For more information please visit: http://www.bettawards.com

Anatomy of a SOCIABLE Care Centre – Supported Services

This new approach will build upon three tested technological pillars, which have proven therapeutical value, namely: (a) Novel perceptive mixed reality interfaces based on multi-touch surfaces, (b) An open platform for cognitive training games development, which allows the flexible creation and customization of cognitive training games and (c) “Profiling” and social “matching” capabilities boosting social networking and interaction between aged individuals.

SOCIABLE will be piloted with the participation of 350 senior citizens in 7 different pilot sites (TRONDHEIM Kommune, Hygeia Hospital, Morgagni Pierantoni Hospital, Municipality of Forlì, Social Policy Center of the Municipality of Kifissia, Santa Lucia Foundation and PREVI S.L) from 4 European countries (Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain).

Overall, SOCIABLE will integrate, deploy and operate an innovative ICT-enabled on-line service for assessing and accordingly reinforcing the mental state of the elderly through pleasant gaming activities for cognitive training, while at the same time boosting their social networking and activating their day-to-day interpersonal interactions. SOCIABLE is envisaged as a service with high potential for societal impact that could add significant value to current service offerings of care services providers. Furthermore, it is associated with a clear business potential for sustainability and wider use by care service providers within (but also outside of) the SOCIABLE consortium.

SOCIABLE is a pilot type B project supported by the ICT-PSP Programme of the European Commission
Duration: 36 Months
Project number: 238891
Project web site: www.sociable-project.eu

STAND4ALL project has been underway since January 2009, when a partnership of 7 organizations was formed to deliver STAND4ALL (Standards for All) – “Training of Stakeholders on consultations on standardization”. This project will promote the use of CEN/CENELEC Guide 6 – ‘Guidelines for standards developers to address the needs of older persons and persons with disabilities’ within the European standardization process. The Guide is a tool to give those involved in standards development a broader understanding of these needs and how they should be addressed.
STAND4ALL is about including the needs of people with disabilities, not only during standards development but also considering the final use of the standard.
The primary objective of STAND4ALL is the development and implementation of training courses addressed to standardization experts and consumer representatives in order to promote the use of CEN/CENELEC Guide 6 within CEN, CENELEC and ETSI Technical Committees.
The impact of STAND4ALL will be an enlarged European network of experts and accessibility specialists in the field of standardization so that the essential requirements for elderly people and those with disabilities are taken into account in the field of standardization.
The primary activities of STAND4ALL is the Collection of information in the field of disability and standardization, therefore they would like interested parties to complete a questionnaire aimed at:
- identifying the current knowledge of those organizations participating in the standardization process
- collecting feedback about the current situation regarding the participation of disabled people in the Standardization process.

The STAND4ALL consortium consists of seven partner organizations from five different European countries and will be coordinated by NEN.
- Netherlands Standardisation Institute (NEN) – The Netherlands
- Spanish Association for Standardisation and Certification (AENOR) – Spain
- British Standardisation Institution (BSI) – United Kingdom
- Vilans – The Netherlands
- German Working Party for the Assistance of Persons with Disabilities and Chronic Diseases (BAG Selbsthilfe) – Germany
- German Research Institute Technology and Disability (FTB) – Germany
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) – Belgium