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In support of the Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards, Vodafone, Mobile Monday, in conjunction with NDRC Inventorium have partnered with the NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology and the Irish Internet Association (IIA) to run a two-day workshop 21-22 August from 12:00 - 18:00h to stimulate the generation of smartphone app ideas to submit to the competition for a share of €200k worth of prize money.

The two-day workshop will explore the challenges, problems and commercial opportunities that exist for developers and entrepreneurs when building smartphone applications that consider the needs of this significant demographic.

For more information about the Dublin Workshop and to register check out - http://smartaccessiblemobile.eventbrite.com/

And if you'd like a quick workshop taster, here is a short report from our last two workshops in The Netherlands and UK written by Jon Azpiroz, Vodafone Foundation, Spain.

Amsterdam workshop: The workshop was held in the new Vodafone office in Amsterdam. Danielle Puma shared with the audience the Netherlands initiatives and the Mobile for Goods competition that is currently carried out in The Netherlands. Later on Jon Azpiroz presented the Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards Competition 2012, the entry criteria and deadlines.

Debby van der Schuit introduced the panel members of users and explained the process. The panel was composed by an elderly user, a user with intellectual disabilities, a deaf user and user with mobility impairment. They shared their user perspective and personal experience and let the audience understand what their needs where and their expectations towards this competition.

After the user session there were tours to show the building and interactive speed-dating to allow developers to have one to one sessions with the end users to share their ideas. A lunch and with sandwiches and soups before the event continued.

A technical session with demonstration of tools and applications was carried out by Jon Azpiroz. The developers were able to see real examples of mobile solutions that improve the accessibility of mobile devices. Assistive technologies such as screen readers or alternate text entry systems, accessible applications that have been developed with the design for all paradigm and the winners from 2011 were presented.

Finally a simulation session was carried out by Jon Azpiroz. A software simulation tools was presented (Mobile Impairment Simulator - http://sourceforge.net/projects/mistool/) as well as several glasses and gloves simulators. The attendees were able to try several Android applications with these simulators and get a better insight of what should be done to develop accessible applications.

Danielle and Jon concluded the event that had a lot of interaction from the audience.

London workshop: The workshop was held in the UCL Anatomy Building thanks to the collaboration of the Mobile Monday. Jo Rabin, Director, Mobile Monday London made the introduction and Jon Azpiroz presented the Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards Competition 2012, the entry criteria and deadlines.

Jon Azpiroz introduced the panel members of users and explained the process. The panel was composed by a dyslexic user, an auditive impairment user, a low vision user that connected remotely to the event and a blind user that was expert in Android devices. The session was very well taken and for more than hour developers made questions to the users in order to create accessible applications.

A technical session with demonstration of tools and applications was carried out by Jon Azpiroz. The developers were able to see real examples of mobile solutions that improve the accessibility of mobile devices. Assistive technologies such as screen readers or alternate text entry systems, accessible applications that have been developed with the design for all paradigm and the winners from 2011 were presented.

Finally a simulation session was carried out by Kath Moonan. Kath presented several glasses, gloves simulators and formed teams to evaluate the applications with these gadgets. The attendees shared their personal experience with the simulations and highlighted their main barriers while using the devices.

Jo and Jon concluded the event and thanked everyone for their participation.