The "Code for a Cause (C4C)" competition will take place in the study year 2015-2016. University student teams develop prototypes Assistive Technology and eAccessibility solutions and submit it to the competition. The best team from each campus taking part shall be invited to the C4C Finals to be held at ICCHP 2016.

Background

In 2012, ICCHP co-operated with the network eAccess+ (supported by the European Commission through its ICTPSP Programme) and with the US-based nonprofit Project:Possibility to set up a students competition for open source AT and eAccessibility solutions for people with disabilities in Europe.

Project:Possibility is a non-profit organization that inspires students to create groundbreaking open source software for persons with disabilities. It accomplishes this by partnering with local universities and technology companies to host coding competitions. These competitions introduce them to the world of possibilities unlocked by accessibility and open source assistive technology. After the event, students can then connect to a community of persons with disabilities and software developers - a collaborative community that together enables universal access to experiences previously impossible to achieve.

Established in 2007, SS12 (in Europe C4C) is the world's first accessibility-themed software development competition, with international taking place in the United States and Asia. A first competition in Europe was held in 2011/2012 with a final taking place at ICCHP 2012. Since that, each year a C4C is organised with its finals at ICCHP or AAATE (http://www.aaate.net/ProjectPossibility)

The competition 2016 will have its finals at ICCHP 2016 in Linz, Austria.

Aim

Our aim is to inspire students, faculty and other stakeholders in Computer Science/Engineering and related fields to take up accessibility and Assistive Technology as a topic. It

• introduces the power and the need of eAccessibility to the next generation of software engineers
• brings students in contact with the eAccessiblity and AT field and in particular with end users
• contributes to easy and fast solutions of pressing AT and eAccessibility problems outlined and defined by users
• releases code as open source which facilitates an accelerated path towards products and services.

Thereby a long term impact on the uptake and implementation of accessibility in practice is expected.

Target Groups

• University and college students in computer science/engineering and related fields to take part in the C4C.
• Faculty staff and administrators to incorporate event into their engineering curricula to involve students in the C4C.
• End users and experts to define pressing AT and eAccessibility problems to be solved.
• AT and eAccessibility experts to guide and consult student groups as Mentors.
• Industry leaders in technology and accessibility to connect students with opportunities within their organisations and support the event as Sponsors.

Format

The “C4C” events bring together students in groups of 2 – 4 people, supported by researchers and industry mentors to compete against each other in national qualifying rounds in spring 2016.

Students may work on projects proposed by themselves, their university facilitators or drawn from a pool of ideas generated by the European coordinators. Students will be provided opportunities to connect with end users, eAccessibility experts, industry leaders and others when developing their software.

To generate the largest awareness and impact campuses and faculty are strongly encouraged to include the activities in the standard curricula of the students and accredit their work. Partner universities will thereby identify the best national teams to represent them at the C4C finals.

The finals will be held in July 2016 at ICCHP, where an international judging committee identifies the C4C winners – the team with the best accessible open source software application to help people with disabilities in their daily life.

Examples on former project - highlights can be found following http://projectpossibility.org/projects.php

Call for Participation

We call for expression of interest: If you belong to one of the above groups and want to take part, please get in contact with

• Stanley Lam (Project:Possibility)
• Andrea Petz (ICCHP)
• Klaus Miesenberger (ICCHP)

at: c4c@icchp.org

For detailed information on how a C4C event is organised and what the roles of the different groups are, please refer to the C4C FactSheet, the SS12 Website and the C4C Toolkit.

Timeline

• Call for Expression of Interest
• First introductory Skype - Telco: March 2016
• List of universities which will be involved: February, 2016
• List of projects: April 2016
• National Coding activities: March - End of May 2016
• Selection of national finalists: June 2016
• Refinement of national winner projects, preparing presentation and travel: June 2016
• European C4C final and judging panel: July 12-13, 2016, within the framework of ICCHP in Linz
• Awarding the European C4C winner: July 14, 2016, on the occasion of the ICCHP plenary session.

Former Events

Following universities contributed teams for the Project:Possibility event 2014 with its finals at ICCHP'14 in Paris:

• Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
• University of the Aegean, Greece
• University of Southampton, UK
• Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany
• Université Paris 8, France
• University of Dundee, UK
• Zurich University for Applied Science, Switzerland
• Oslo and Akershuis University College of Applied Sciences, Norway
• University of Linz, Austria

The C4C culminated in the announcement of the winner, on basis of previous presentations to three judges, experts in the field of software development in particular in the field of accessibility and AT for people with disabilities, and an interested audience. The main evaluation criteria were functionality, amount of work, usability, creativity, adequacy, extensibility and sustainability. Stability and error-proneness were less important since these projects were not considered to be final products. During the presentations the students had to point out considerations, strategies and results for all evaluation criteria and especially convince the jury and the audience that their work contributes to accessibility in a sustainable and user-centred way.
Besides the project presentation and other organisational events students of the qualified teams had the chance to attend ICCHP sessions giving them the opportunity to listen to state-of-the-art scientific research in the field of accessibility and AT for people with disabilities. Social events in the evenings rounding off C4C, provided the perfect occasion to get to know each other and ask coordinators and organisational staff also working in this field about their experiences and hints for further improvement of their projects.

Sponsors and Supporters