When Becca Hume was 16, she got a part-time job where she met a deaf person for the first time. “I realised how isolated he was at work, so I started learning sign language to be able to talk to him properly,” she says. It made her understand the daily frustrations facing people who cannot hear and she wanted to do something about it.
An MA focused on accessible product design at Ulster university gave her the idea for TapSOS, an app that sends users’ location and medical history to the fire, police, ambulance services and coastguard at the tap of a few buttons. “I came up with this idea with the deaf community in mind, but actually it is potentially life-saving for lots of other people who cannot speak to 999 operators,” says Hume.
The app is due to be approved for integration into BT’s emergency service network this month (July) and by September, all 999 UK operators will be able to receive emergency alerts from TapSOS, with users able to download and use the app from September.
The simplicity, likely reach and potential to save lives made it the digital health winner at this year’s Tech4Good awards announced on Tuesday, 17 July.
The awards, run by AbilityNet, recognise organisations and individuals who use digital technology to improve the lives of others. Now in their eighth year, there were more than 200 entries in 11 categories including community impact, accessibility and health.
The winning entry in the accessibility category, Be My Eyes, is a free app connecting blind and partially sighted people with volunteers for visual assistance through a live video call. The 82,115 users can ask for help from more than 1.3 million volunteers to identify a can of beans from a can of sweetcorn, for example, or to read a letter, or get help with navigation outside. It is available in more than 150 countries and in over 180 languages. Four of the finalists in the accessibility category use technology to improve lives for partially sighted and blind people
Read more here.
Source: The Guardian, 17 July 2018