RoboBraille named winner of 2007 Social Contribution Award.
Press release
London, the 6th of December 2007 - The British Computer Society (BCS) has named the RoboBraille service winner of this year’s Social Contribution Award. The award ceremony took place on the 6th of December 2007 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Other nominees for this prestigious award were IBM, Microsoft, South Yorkshire Police Force, The University of Hull and the environment Agency. The RoboBraille service makes it possible for visually impaired and reading-impaired users to have electronic documents translated into either synthetic speech or Braille when it is necessary. The goal of the project is that as many people as possible should have access to digital information and obtain self-reliance in daily life. This goal has been crucial to the decision of the BCS to nominate RoboBraille for the Social Contribution Award 2007. "We are proud and honored to announce that Synscenter Refsnæs and the RoboBraille Consortium have won the prestigious Social Contribution Award 2007 from the British Computer Society. It represents a huge amount of recognition of the positive social perspective of the project,"
says Lars Ballieu Christensen, RoboBraille Coordinator and leader of the RoboBraille Consortium. "As an increasing amount of necessary information, such as bank statements, articles and teaching materials becomes available in a digital format, it is crucial to create solutions ensuring that everybody can join in. We are thus working to expand the service in order to meet even more user needs of a quick and simple translation. We’re e.g. aiming at enabling the service to handle even more languages, pdf files and mathematics"
, he says.
About the British Computer Society
The British Computer Society is an ICT trade organisation with more than 60000 members spread over more than 100 countries. The purpose of the BCS IT Social Award is to recognize and promote projects within the British and the European ICT trade excelling professionally, innovatively, and creatively. Furthermore, these projects make a special effort in favour of certain individuals or groups.
For more information on BCS, please visit www.bcs.org
About RoboBraille
RoboBraille is an email-based service capable of translating electronic documents into either synthetic speech or contracted Braille. The service is available free of charge to all non-commercial users, and you do not need to register before using it.
RoboBraille seeks to solve a universal problem – making otherwise inaccessible electronic documents accessible to people with visual or reading impairments. Originally a Danish service, RoboBraille is currently being validated in Ireland, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Great Britain in the framework of a pan-European consortium supported by the European Commission. The Danish part of RoboBraille has been available since 2004; in January 2007, support for British English, Italian, Portuguese and Greek was added to the service. In June and July, French and Lithuanian were added. The long-term goal of the RoboBraille Consortium is to secure a stable commercial customer base to finance the RoboBraille service. It could consist of banks, pharmaceutical companies, public institutions and other enterprises wishing to use the service to produce material in Braille or audio for customers and clients.
About Synscenter Refsnaes and the RoboBraille Consortium
RoboBraille is developed and operated by Synscenter Refnaes , the national Danish service and support organisation for blind and partially sighted children and youth. Synscenter Refnaes is the coordinator of the EU eTEN RoboBraille project in a consortium also including Associazione Nazionale Subvedenti, ONLUS (Italy), the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (Ireland), the National Association of Housing of the Visually impaired (Ireland), the Royal National College for the Blind (United Kingdom), the Pagkypria Organozi Tyflon (Cyprus) and Centro de Inovacao para Deficiencentes (Portugal).
For more information about Synscenter Refsnaes, please visit http://www.synref.dk/