Visige - Social Network for Blind Kids

Visige - Social Network For Blind Kids

Project 2012-03-05 23:12:53 +1300

Darryl, the principal of the project, was contacted last year by 4 Waikato University students looking for a project "to change the world". Darryl is the founder of Povidi NZ Ltd, a company set up in 2009 to exploit the SoundPost Orientation System as well as developing other products for the blind and visually impaired. Povidi's website can be found at: http://www.povidi.com.

After some initial discussions the Waikato team of Adrian Shaw, Michael Lundon, Ethan Duff and Grace Ng decided to investigate and develop a simple social network for the mainstreamed blind and visually impaired school students of New Zealand. Main streaming where blind and visually impaired students attend their local school has had many benefits, however it is difficult for these students to maintain social contact with other students facing the same challenges and a simple but effective social network was seen as a major benefit and a way for these students to maintain contact with their peers.

Working closely with Darryl the team designed Visige as a proof of concept and the site was tested by a number of students ranging in age from 11 to 19 all of who found it extremely easy to use, fun and effective. The site has also been looked at by a number of educationalists and trainers who believe the site has potential as a training tool for all ages of blind and visually impaired as they learn to surf and navigate the world wide web using altered colours, magnification, braille and speech output. In addition Larry L.Lewis of Flying Blind (http://www.flying-blind.com), a shareholder in Povidi and United States representative, is very excited with the potential of Visige and what it will accomplish for its users.

The current implementation is a proof of concept and the site needs to be moved to a different technology platform and to have the full and complete functionality implemented. Povidi will undertake this task and commits to hosting the site for a minimum of 2 years. In addition 2 blind professionals will be hired to help in the completion of the tasks, Dylan a computer science student at Canterbury University and Teri, a fully qualified and experienced Quality Assurance Engineer.

Funding both the development and on-going administration of a site like Visige
is difficult with service and government agencies not seeing the potential benefits, or the use of the site being outside of their mandate. In addition a standard targeted advertising model used by Google and Facebook is unlikely to be of value due to the small and highly specialised nature of the audience. We are seeking $7,500 for this implementation and if we are able to gather more than this will work on the significant enhancements of live chat and Facebook integration.

So please join with Darryl of Povidi, Dylan, Teri, Adrian, Michael, Ethan and Grace and help us to meet the initial design goal to "change the world".

Comments