Winners of ‘ICT 4 Inclusion Challenge’ – India Edition announced

Press Release

• 06-01-2023

Winners presented innovative solutions for mitigating the impact of climate change on people with disabilities

Mumbai, India – December , 2022 – Atos announces the winners of the ICT 4 Inclusion Challenge (ICT4IC) India Edition 2022 which this year focused on the topic of “Mitigating the impact of climate change on people with disabilities and older people in India”. The three winning teams were announced at Atos’ Innovation in Disability Inclusion event, a virtual ceremony celebrating the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (#IDPWD). It was streamed on Friday 2nd December across Atos’ social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube) and is available on demand The competition had over 400 applications and was eligible for India-based participants only.

The competition was organized by Atos and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) on behalf for German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) as part of the Make-IT Alliance and together with the new cooperation partners Zero Project and Ability Foundation.

The aim of this challenge is to develop digital and technical innovations which are designed to alleviate the impact of climate change and disaster related risks for people with disabilities and elderly people in India. This could be a mainstream solution or an accessibility & inclusion specific solution. For example, an energy efficient digital device or application, that is made disability inclusive or universally accessible; or a program that raises awareness around technology-based inclusive climate action and inclusive disaster risk reduction.

After a two-month application period in June and preselection down to 16 teams, 8 teams were invited to conduct in-depth expert interviews in September. From this group, 7 teams successfully pitched their solutions and 3 teams were short-listed to be part of the Zero Project Impact Transfer Program, the first accelerator to support the internationalization of innovative solutions for disability inclusion. Finally, these 3 teams had to pitch their solutions in front of a high-ranking jury, made up of 10 members including Atos executives as well as leaders from GIZ, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, civil society and international organizations like World Institute on Disability plus the partners Zero Project and Ability Foundation. The finalists selected are:

• 1st prize and competition winners: This award was split into two.
  • ‘Shelter’ by Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group and Tattva Foundation, with the following team members: Dr. Shiraz A. Wajih, Devesh Pratap Singh, Girdhari Bora and Nivedita Mani.

Shelter is interactive Artificial Intelligence-enabled information access and social networking platform generating personalized alerts and mitigation strategies, to support older persons and persons with disabilities with 4 focus areas: Self learning, Gamification, Peer-to-peer engagement & AI/ML enablement. The team won €3,500 and vouchers for sitting the International Association of Accessibility professionals CPACC certification exam.

‘Swiftchat’ from Convegenius Digital India Services, with the following team members: Shivangi Jain, Shikhar Gupta, Jairaj Bhattacharya, Arnav Pyasi, Siddharth Nayar.

Swiftchat is a multilingual conversational AI chatbot for learning and development and to raise awareness of climate change, provide practical support and enable actions in concrete crisis situations. The team won €3,500 and vouchers for sitting the International Association of Accessibility professionals CPACC certification exam.

• 2nd prize: ‘DISABILITY RESCUE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DRMS)’ with team members: Pramod Dabrase, Dr. Reena Shinde, Dr. Sumit Shinde, Dr. Saumil Asher, Sushant Shinde.

DRMS is integrating ICT based systems, processes and stakeholders to reach out to persons with disabilities in the shortest amount of time possible by locating them in the click of a mouse, particularly in high-risk geographies. The team won €1,500 and vouchers for sitting the International Association of Accessibility professionals CPACC certification exam.

There is no third place as there is three winning teams, with two sharing the first place. In addition to cash and vouchers, each of the winning teams will benefit from a tailored 3-month mentorship at Atos starting in January 2023 in addition to the Zero Project Impact Transfer Program, for which only 10 initiatives are selected each year from the hundreds of entries received.

All winners are also invited to present their solutions to potential partners at the Zero Project India Conference in Spring 2023.

Commenting on these results, Udo Littke, Head of Atos Germany said “Congratulations to our winners and to all of those who entered the competition. We know that this year’s topic was a challenging one. Climate change and disaster risk reduction are some of the most important and urgent topics of our times, and ones in which persons with disabilities and older persons are often not considered. With this challenge we wanted to identify innovative digital solutions that would solve the challenges that these people face in the context of climate change. We’re very proud to be working with all our partners to help support and develop digital innovations that can make a difference to these communities”

Accessibility and Digital Inclusion stand at the heart of Atos’ Raison d’etre and materializes into Atos’ digital workplace portfolio, with diverse solutions helping companies for the inclusive digital transformation as well as Accessibility As A Service supporting people with situational, temporary or permanent disabilities to work without barriers in the digital workplace.

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