Thursday, December 3, 2020

GARI Design Challenge – 2,500€ for helping people with disabilities easier find what they are looking for

The Mobile & Wireless Forum (MWF) established the Global Accessibility Reporting Initiative (GARI) in 2008 to provide information on the accessibility features in today’s devices. GARI now features an online database with information on the accessibility features in over 1,500 devices including mobile phones, tablets, Smart TVs and Wearables. You’ll also find information on accessibility apps that work on these devices. 

The database is free to use, available online in 19+ languages and is visited by stakeholders around the world. The objective of GARI is to help people find a device that best suits their needs. GARI does this by providing a central source of information on the accessibility features available in devices and is primarily aimed at seniors, people with disabilities or some functional impairment and their families. 


The Challenge

The GARI website and database  offer a wealth of information which makes it sometimes difficult for people to find what they are looking for – in particular if they are not yet very familiar with mobile accessibility.

We are therefore looking for proposals on how to 

  • adapt the interface of the GARI website and database to help our key audiences easier find what they are looking for
    • our key audiences include persons with different disabilities and often multiple functional impairments, their family members and carers, occupational therapists, elderly users, and everyone having specific access needs
    • to get an idea of what people are looking for in the GARI database have a look at the feature guide: http://www.mwfai.org/docs/eng/MWF_GARI_FeatureGuide2.pdf
  • better utilize and display the available data on the GARI website
  • develop user personas for GARI and how they would interact with the website and database
    • consider the critical user journey


Technical requirements: 

  • the website must be at least WCAG AA level – AAA level would be a plus 
  • the website will be used by blind and vision impaired visitors using screen-readers and zoom function
  • the website will be used by visitors with a variety of disabilities and functional limitations
  • the design must be adaptive (desktop, mobile)
  • the website must also be accessible at low internet bandwidth 


Submission

1) You can use the GARI xml feed  to create a model site for your proposed design. Include in your submission the URL to the model website if available.

2) If you are unfamiliar with working with xml feeds, you may also submit your proposal in a different format, such as mock-ups, sketches, textual description of your ideas. 


For all submissions, please include the rational for your proposal, an accessibility statement, as well as any additional information you would like to share. 


Send your submissions to: accessibility (at) mwfai.org 


A jury of three international accessibility experts will assess all proposals and select the 1st and 2nd place. 


The 1st place will receive a price money of 2,500€, the 2nd place will receive a price money of 1,000€.


Deadline for submissions is 15 January 2021. The winners will be announced in spring 2021. 


The participants in the design challenge provide their submissions under a Creative Commons license  and grant the MWF permission to use the submitted material and designs for the GARI website and database, as well as related commercial and non-commercial projects and communications work.