Finalists of the 2011 Microsoft Imagine Cup Festival have created a new utility for the visually impaired. Alexis Tzanetopoulos and Philippos Protogeridis have created an Internet accessible Facebook application.
While studying at the University in Athens, Alexis had the inspiration of creating an innovative application. He decided that the growing demand for Internet accessibility, gave huge opportunities, and in turn created an application for the blind to browse social networks. The new project code named “Eclipsis” uses speech recognition to navigate the common tasks on popular websites.
Alexis’ application involves routing individuals from his website to the site of their choosing. These students are working to create similar applications for other popular sites such as Wikipedia, and YouTube. However, as Greece is having problems with their economy, it is difficult to find sponsors. With or without funding, the students claim they will have an updated version of their project to compete in the next Microsoft Imagine Cup in 2012. Although a bold statement, Alexis and Philippos plan to increase social webpages’ accessibility for the visually impaired, by solving many of the computer related problems.
We at the Bureau applaud their efforts.
