"Oh .. now I can’t see you.. where are you?" I said, taking off my glasses. Gregory  put on his colorful glasses and said laughing "I see you". Then I woremy glasses and said "ha! And I see you". This game lasted a few minutes, until the laptops of Vassilis and Paul were setup for the children of the Special Primary School for the Blind in Kallithea to try the Memor-i game and record whatever changes are needed in order to improve the game. 

Memor-i is an electronic game that is now being developed by SciFY. It's like the game we played when we were young, where you have to find the cards with two identical animals. In our case, it is specially designed to be played by children that are blind or with low vision. For example, it has "doors" which, when opened, you see a small animal and together with the image, you hear the sound it makes, so you can match pairs and win.The children can be navigate in the game with a special interface and soundeffects. At the Elementary School for the Blind in Kallithea, children with impaired vision were to test it, like Gregoris, with whose glasses we played with.

Children that do not see at all also tested it. One of these children is Alice. Vassilis informed us that she had tried both previous games for blind children (LEAP) with excellent results: she was incredibly enthusiastic for the game, and we achieved educational goals, as well. While essentially she does not know how to use a computer, the game became the reason she started to learn, to come into contact with it: without seeing the keyboard, she recognizes and remembers the location of the keys, with which she will be move in the game. As we have learned from our actions so far, this is true for almost all blind children in gradeschool: through the game they start learning about computers.

Success for little Alice is not only in the electronic space of games, as we were informed proudly by her teacher; she has lent her voice to the narration of the story of “Paplomatou”, for which each child has made their own book. This book has pages on which the children have created "images" of various craft scardboard / fabrics and pages on which the text of the story isprinted. Text for the sighted and Braille (Braille Code) for those who do not see at all.

Children who came to help us improve Memor-i, were all so excited that they would do something different in their everyday life, something their mom could do, their dad, their brothers and most of us. Something we take for granted, is anadventure for them. In their voice, you recognized the joy, they did not want the game to end and give their turn to the other children. Even children who had not touched a keyboard before, wanted to try again. When we told them it is at an early stage and we want their help to finish it, the response was outstanding: all of them told us with enthusiasm that the game is perfect and they would play again even at this incomplete stage!

All this communication, in addition to improvements to the Memor-i game, gave us inspiration for other things. Any child we met at the Special Primary School for the Blind in Kallithea, had the well known children's liveliness, the interest to learn new things, enthusiasm to talk to us for everyday things, such as an afternoon walk, or what dream they saw at night! It is nice to hear that even people who do not see the world with the same ease that we do, have their own dreams and plans a colorful future for everyone.

By PatrycjaWeronika Wosiecka

*Names of the children are changed to protect their privacy

Three brand new games for blind people!

Thanks to your support of our crowdfunding campaign, we were able to offer a gift to children.

We developed and offered for free, three electronic games for blind children, in order to help their education and let them have fun. Up to 100 people helped us in this effort by contributing to the crowdfunding campaign. Now we are proud to present our gifts: “Noah’s Ark” and two more educational, musical games that aim to cover the need for games specially designed for blind people. The games are available for free here (in Greek).

Games' Descreption

The game are based on the well-known memory game in which the player tries to find pairs of identical cards; But in our case, the game is designed for the needs of the blind. Therefore the “cards” are sounds and the interface is specially designed for the blind.
In the first game, the player is in Noah's Ark and tries to find pairs of animals in order to feed them.
In the musical games the player is a valued assistant in a musical performance and learns about the musical instruments. In “Find that musical instrument” game, the player pairs the sounds of the instruments with their names; whereas in “Find the musical instrument category” the player learns their categories.

Special Design

The games were developed after many discussions and brainstorming sessions with the children and special educators. A great asset of ours was the experience we had gained by developing the first games for blind people earlier in 2015 and the fact that we work closely with the final users. The outcome? The sound, the user experience, the gradual introduction of the player in to the game and initiation of a “friend-guide” in the game, are developed for one reason: to create games suitable for blind children.

Next Steps

We are not going to stop! We are looking for funding to:

• Create the English Versions, as we did with the first three electronic games for blind children that we created, in order more people to be able to use them,.
• Give the opportunity to everyone to upload their own sounds and to create new games that will also be available for everyone
• Give the opportunity for online gaming against a friend no matter how long our friends are. 

The music games are implemented with the kind support of

For more information contact us.

13th SciFY Academy | Big Data
"From Infrastructure to Implementation"

On Wednesday, October 19th, SciFYΕΕΛΛΑΚ and INNOVATHENS, organized the first seminar  of this Academic year on Big Data. Up to 120 people attended the 13th SciFY Academy where Dr. Konstantinos Tsakalozos and Dr. George Giannakopoulos introduced us to the topic of Big Data.

The event opened by Mr. Vassilis Giannakopoulos, Marketing Director & Impact Manager at SciFY, who presented the free and open source assistive technology platform Talk and Play. The project is being developed by SciFY with an exclusive donation from Stavros Niarchos Foundation. This prototype system allows people who have disabilities and also speech difficulties : to communicate, listen to music, watch movies and play tailored-made, specialized games that enhance their skills and can help them recover.

To access the presentation (in Greek) of Mr. Vasilis Giannakopoulos follow the link: http://go.scify.gr/sfacIN13PrVG 

In the following session, Dr Konstantinos Tsakalozos, Software Developer - Big Data at Canonical Ltd., started by mentioning the origins of big data and reasons for using big data solution. Data increase as your activities expand. For instance as your business grows it produces increasingly more data. Also, nowadays it is easy to efficiently gather all these large amounts of data. The conventional processing methods, however, are not applicable for storing and processing this kind of data volume. Thus, it is necessary for you and your business to utilize big data technology, in order to process the continually increasing data, effectively. In turn, the generated knowledge will lead to better decision making.

Big Data Software solutions often tend to be complex, requiring staff training and overall are hard to integrate. What we really need, Mr. Tsakalozos informs us, is to lower the operational costs of modeling and implementing your big data solutions.

Mr. Tsakalozos presented the Juju platform from Canonical. Juju builds an ecosystem that enables easy setup and access to infrastructures, including big data systems. This ecosystem allows you to implement applications (charms) in any language (Puppet, Ansible, Bash, Python, Java); to take advantage of applications implemented by other vendors and to collaborate with other providers within the community. To access the presentation of  Dr. Konstantinos Tsakalozos follow the link: http://go.scify.gr/sfacIN13PrKT 

For more information about juju platform, see: 

• jujucharms.com/get-started 
• jujucharms.com/big-data 
• developer.juju.solutions

In the last session of the seminar, Dr. George Giannakopoulos, CTO at SciFY & Researcher at  Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of NCSR Demokritos, referred to the application of big data in a variety of cases, from social media analysis, to bioinformatics and wind turbine proactive maintenance! He stressed that “big data” is not only about “much” data, i.e. the volume is not their only distinctive feature. Other features of data, indicative of a problem of "big data" are also the speed of data change (velocity), the variety of forms and ways data are found (variety), the possibility of their validation (veracity) and the value generated by them, allowing action and reaction (value). Then, Mr. Giannakopoulos referred to the Big Data Europe Project [1], an international project funded by the EU, which brings 16 organizations from 10 European countries in a partnership for the future of "big data" in Europe. The 7 project development pilots are aligned with the societal challenges of the Horizon 2020 framework [2], covering domains such as: 1) Health, 2) Food & Agriculture, 3) Energy, 4) Transport, 5) Climate, 6) Social Sciences and 7) Security.

To access the presentation of Dr. George Giannakopoulos  follow the link: http://go.scify.gr/sfacIN13PrGG

References:

[1]www.big-data-europe.eu

[2]http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/societal-challenges

I cannot even describe how I feel. Anticipation, excitement, joy... About a year of preparation and now the time has come: We have started!
I don’t even know where this journey will take us. But let’s take things from the start, because words are rushing out…

“They can’t communicate with their kids”

The first time I realized the need when I was in ELEPAP (Rehabilitation for The Disabled) to offer them the remote control that we developed for people with disabilities.
- “Hey guys, can you do something more?” Ria, ELEPAP ergotherapist, told me with agony. “...For our children, who cannot communicate”
- “Tell me…”
- “They cannot tell us what they want, how they feel: They have mobility problems, but more than often their speech isn’t clear as well, some of them cannot speak at all. Do something so that they can tell us what they need, such as a glass of water, something to eat or that they are cold…
- “Hold on Ria, how are they communicating now? There are some communication programs for PCs, aren’t there?”
- “Yes, but this kind of program is expensive. And if you count the cost of the equipment as well… Well, that’s a lot… How many of these parents have enough money in Greece to spare for such a need, in the middle of an economic crisis? Not even we, as ELEPAP, don’t have as much as we need. And this is not all!”
- “What else?”
- “Well, here we do ergotherapy with the children, a great job is being done, and the program you mentioned earlier is helping us a lot, but when they get back home... the work stops… The hours are not enough in their everyday routine, progress is very slow”
- “Wait a moment, what do you mean? When they are home, how do they communicate with their parents, how do they exercise?”
- “The situation is very difficult Vassilis…”

I left puzzled.
“Who has the money?” Thinking about the agony of the parents: they want their kids to be able to communicate, to exercise more in order to be more efficient, or even self sufficient, but…

The same situation, everywhere

Some time later, the same need was described to me by Dimitra, an ergotherapist at Evaggelismos Hospital. This time it did not regard children. She was talking with great concern about adults that are being treated at the Increased Care Unit (ICU).
"Many of those people can not move or speak. As long as they are in the ICU, I can understand what they want with the help of a program and a special button that they click in any way they can. But, when they leave, how will they be able to communicate with their families? How will they say "I have itchy feet" or "Rearrange my bedding"? These systems are expensive"
Again the same question: "Who has the money?"

The same issue came up also with Aristotle, a very active ergotherapist at KKPPA (Social Care Centre in Attica). We heard the same thing over and over again from all ergotherapists we spoke with…

And what will we do about this? 

The team immediately started working on it. We experimented for some time, we studied in detail what is already available, what we can do ... We even prepared pilot solutions...

So, when we submitted a funding proposal to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, our anxiety was greater than ever. The need is enormous, will the proposal be approved?
And it was approved. Approved! The people of the Foundation understood and shared our concerns. So here we are... we begin!

Here we go!

We are working intensively, we are already ahead of schedule: We are developing “Talk and Play”. A system that we will be concluding in autumn and will be offering for free to everyone. With this software program people with mobility limitations, or facing problems with speech, will be able to:
- Communicate
- Choose music or video on their PC
- Train and exercise for their rehabilitation under the instructions of their ergotherapist.

We will create and offer a ready-to-use solution (software program built in a PC and a special operating system) to our partners: ELEPAP (Rehabilitation for The Disabled), Recovery Laboratory of Athens Medical School (Evaggelismos Hospital), Social Care Centre of Attica, and to parents and their kids.

In order to have it at home, for their family.

Because, we don’t want “money” to be the problem anymore, at least in this case. We’ll do our best. And that’s a promise being kept.

The project is being developed by SciFY
with exclusive donation from Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

The project was developed by SciFY with an exclusive donation from Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

On Wednesday the 13th of April, at 19:00, more than 120 people attended the 10th SciFY Academy which was organised by SciFY and the Hub of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Technopolis City of Athens - Innovathens, on the topic of “Internet of Things - From an idea to an international market”. SciFY Academy is a free, series of presentations which aims to promote the free diffusion of knowledge, conducted by the Non Profit Organisation SciFY.
The event’s first speaker was Chrysostomos Bouras, member of the “TheThingsNetwork Athens” community. He presented his team’s (GRIot) effort in expanding a network of Internet of Things in Athens which will belong exclusively to citizens/volunteers.

Afterwards, Lefteris Papageorgiou, CEO of Entranet, with his vast experience in the area of new technologies introduced us to the world of Internet of Things (Iot) using the “house from the future” as an example.

An expected question is “what exactly does the house of the future have that makes it different than ordinary residences?” The answer is that you can have full control of the house through voice commands. Indicatively we will mention voice recognition: for example you will be able to speak to the elevator and tell it on which floor you wish to get off or just the profession of the person you wish to visit. Few of us know that the residents of a ‘smart” house will have access to services such as an electronic information bank which will be updated with biometric information, it will remind you of your medical needs and will offer you the possibility of immediate communication with medical centers.

Furthermore we were informed about the basic steps that must be done to promote an innovative business idea:
Step 1: Build your team
Step 2: Learn your market
Step 3: Calculate the time you will need to enter the market
Step 4: Calculate the cost
Step 5 : Conduct a Business Plan and stick to it
Step 6: Breakdown the Structure
Step 7 : Find the capital
Step 8 : Think of alternative funding sources

We would like to thank Lefteris Papageorgiou, Chrysostomos Bouras, INNOVATHENS and of course all our friends who attended the event making interesting comments and questions, contributing once more in realising our dream of free knowledge diffusion!

Download the presentation here
To be informed on SciFY Academy future events you can register here.
You can watch the event by clicking here.

LEAP tournament games

Blind and sighted students play together!

The problem that we were presented with, was not what we expected. In the I.M Panagiotopoulos School in which we did the tournament game, between sighted children of the school and blind children of Kallithea Special Elementary School for the Blind, the children who wanted to play were so many, and time was limited, that we had to choose who would play, and who would not ... but let's start from the beginning:

The Goal

Our aim was to talk to students aged 10-13 (5th and 6th grade students ofelementary school and 1st grade of High Scool), and make them understand that not all people start their life with the same skills and abilities but it does not matter, because in real life we help each other, regardless of our personal potential and abilites, and we need the skills of other people.

Moreover, our aim was to create partnerships between sighted and blind students because although the sighted students can see the computer screen and (obviously) "control" the game, the blind or visually impaired students have a (proven) better sense of hearing and space.

In other words, we all wanted to play and learn from it.

The preparation

"But, Ms Elina, how could blind children play tennis if they do not see?", "And the arrows on the screen, how will they find them in order to play?".

These were some of the obvious questions that the students of I.M. Panagiotopoulos School had during the "preliminary" meeting, a few days before the tournament. That’s why the school teachers and our team needed to be well prepared. And that’s exactly what happened. The School Director and the teachers were perfectly prepared: They had accepted with enthusiasm our proposal, and the teachers had explained to the children what to do according to the plan, they had already run an internal tournament …  Furthermore, in order to solve the problem of who would play, we decided to do a draw and have two sighted children for each blind student. This way we also had fewer disappointed children!

The day of the tournament 

It’s Tuesday morning, 15 of March, and we are ready to visit the I.M.  Panagiotopoulos School in Pallini in order to start the LEAP game tournament between blind and sighted students. We were a bit anxious. On everyone’s mind was the responsibility towards children and the details for conducting of the tournament.

At around 10:30 a.m. we were welcomed by the teachers outside the school. We entered the room where the blind children of Kalithea Disability School along with the group of children from the 5th and 6th grade of IM Panagiotopoulos Elementary School were waiting for us. We introduced ourselves to the children and we explained them the rules of the tournament. The rules were simple. Each student of Kalithea school would play three rounds. In each round he/she would be introduced to a new group of children of the other school. Each child could choose which game to play, tennis or tic tac toe.  

Getting to know each other

The children were getting to know each other. They discussed about their classes, their daily routine, their favorite hobbies, their favorite food. It was great to see children with different experiences, so willing to get to know each other, not out of curiosity, but out of real interest.

"You do have English classes? and French? and also learn to play the piano? Uh ... and then when do you have time play?" All the above are just some of the questions that our friend S., student of Kallithea school, asked the students from IM Panagiotopoulos School.
"Seriously, do you write fairy tales? girls from IM Panagiotopoulos asked A. from School of Kallithea"
"What about you guys? You all like pasticcio? Nobody likes the spinach? or the okra?" Laughter and conspiratorial glances … Things are going great…
"Let's start!"

We started to play: we put the headphones on, turned the computer screen off and with only the help of the three-dimensional sound of LEAP game series, the teams were trying to collect the highest possible score. Truth is that the score itself didn’t really bother us. What mattered the most was the children to get to know each other and the experience of playing together.

Results

After a few hours the tournament had cometoan end. There was no winner and no loser, what mattered was the involvement in the game and making some new friends. Having a good time, many smiles ... and some chocolates are enough to make a child happy. :-)

What did we gain?

With actions like this, we feel that we help so that children become familiar with the different disabilities that people may have, learn to respect their fellows and consider them equal to them, so that they adopt an attitude of respect towards people with disabilities.
After the end of the tournament, we had to leave the school. We were all feeling differently, we were feeling the joy of giving, and that the satisfaction that the games which we created, can really change the everyday life of our little friends with vision problems. We felt that we offered a unique experience and a life lesson to all, including us.

The children’s responses

After the tournament ,we spoke privately with each child group. They didn't know us well, but they responded honestly:
"I felt excitement and pleasure that I helped him even a little."
"I think my experience with blind children was perfect, A. played better than me "
"I felt joy and pleasure that worked and got to know these children."
"I was very happy with this experience and been given the opportunity to get to know these children."
"I certainly had fun and I made new friends."
"When I left I felt a bit sad, not because I had to go back to school but because I would miss the girl I played with."

We also asked the sighted children something more: Were you anxious before the meeting?

It came to our surprise that for many children, this was like pushing a button: it made them more relaxed and started talking about it. They understood that we did not expect "politically correct" answers, but honest ones. They felt relieved that they could speak freely:
- Yes! I was thinking how should I speak, what to do ...
- And now, after the games, what do you think? Did you actually have reasons to be concerned?
-(Laughs) Of course not! We are…. how can I say it ... It's just .... they are children, they are friends!
- Come on, I said, have a break!
I didn't want them to understand I was trying to hide a small tear....

On Wednesday the 9th of March, SciFY’s team, together with INNOVATHENS, HUB OF INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP at the TECHNOPOLIS OF ATHENS, conducted a seminar about “Google AdWords Workshop”.

Over 100 people watched Spiros Tzortzis, graduate of the Department of Organization and Business Administration of the Economic University of Athens and member of the  Cooperate Digital Communication Sociality, introduce us to the world of Google Adwords.

In the beginning of the event the attendees watched 3 small videos about:

• SciFY presentation
• The LEAP series games
• The application CIty-R-Us

Continuing, Vassilis Salapatas took the floor and informed us about SciFY’s actions in the field of Organisational Intelligence. He described Newsum, an application which conducts sums of news from different sources and in many languages, he also referred to PServer, an application for automatic personalization services.

We were also informed about SciFY’s new projects which aim to contribute in the Digital Marketing of companies.

Later on, Mr Tzortzis made an introduction to Digital Marketing and described to us concepts like e-mail marketing, Social Media Marketing and Display Advertising.

He analysed what are Google AdWords as well as the terminology that is being used:

• CPC : Cost Per Click
• Quality Score
• CPM : Cost per 1.000 views
• CTR : Click-Through Rate Clicks / Impressions

We were informed about how advertising takes place on the internet -Google Search Network and Google Display Network- and how Quality Score affects the  results.

We would like to thank Spiros, INNOVATHENS and of course all our friends who attended the event making very  interesting comments and questions and contributing once more in making our dream of free diffusion of knowledge come true.

Download the presentation here.

Τo be informed about SciFY’s next events you can register here.

“For people without disabilities, technology makes things easier. For people with disabilities, technology makes things possible.”

Mary Pat Radabaugh, Director of IBM National Support Center for Persons with Disabilities

On Wednesday the 10th of February, the SciFY team, organised at INNOVATHENS Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Technopolis of the Municipality of Athens, a seminar dedicated to Assistive Technologies.

Over 50 people watched Mr. George Kouroupetroglou head of the Accessibility and Technology Voice Lab for student’s with disabilities of the University of Athens and Head of the department of Communication and Signal Processing of the IT Department,  together with Mrs. Kalliopi Lappa, Occupational Therapist, Responsible of Assistive Technologies at the National Rehabilitation Center and  Scientific Partner of the organisation and function of Assistive Technology spaces at the “Asklipio Voulas” General Hospital and at the Intesive Care Unit of “Evaggelismos” General Hospital, introduce us to assistive technologies.

The event started Mr. Aristotle Panagopoulos, occupational therapist at the PIKPA Foundation, introducing the current situation in Greece regarding assistive technologies to the crowd.

Subsequently, Mr. George Kouroupetroglou took the floor, and among others he reffered to the Hardware and Software applications which can be used for:

• Increasing or keeping stable a person’s functional abilities
• Communicating with others
• Helping with optical and linguistic functionalities

Furthermore, there were references on the legislation and policies followed in a National and International level for people with disablities in matters of social intergration. Moreover, the attendants were informed about the existence of an open library with free assistive technology application software, the mAthena collection.

In the second part of the seminar Mrs. Kalliopi Lappa described to us how important it is to offer as soon as possible assistive technologies to people who are in need of them. Furthermore, she talked about the lack of games for blind children and how important SciFY’s effort creating LEAP games is.

Concluding, there was a reference to the value of teamwork and cooperation between those whom it concerns, the members of the interdisciplinary team, the families and the carers. At the end of her speech, Mrs. Lappa refered to the FEIRd device, which was created by SciFY for people who face  disabilities in their upper limbs. Last but not least, she described to us the change it brought to the everyday life of our friend, Alexander.

We warmly thank Sophia, Maria, Thanasis and Margarita, the intrepreters from the  Polyhoros-Kivotos center (center for education in sign language), who voluntarily translated the speeches to sign language.

The event was conducted with the scientific support of the Hellenic Association of Assistive Technologies.

To learn about following SciFY Academy events, you can subscribe here.

SciFY is a place of creation and innovation, a place with different perspective of the world. Just creating applications is not enough, we persue the creation of innovative solutions for people who are in need of them. This is why we decided to develop ICSee (I Can See) an application for people with visual impairments which incoporates all the necessary innovation needed for the people that will use it.

In this effort of ours we came in touch with specialists, organisations and associations of people who deal with visual impairments. We asked them what are their needs? What problems do they face with the already existent assistive technologies? What do they wish we could create for people with severe visual problems? We made them our partners in this effort because they know the problem better than anyone else.

ICSee helps people with visual impairments deal with everyday problems for example it helps them read a receipt or a name on a doorbell e.t.c. An application like ICSee can be a integral part of the everyday lives of people with visual disabilities. With ICSee everyone can see in their own special way:

-It helps with reading texts: it magnifies the text but also offers the possibilty to applying a series of special filters

-It doesn’t have a menu text or a  written tutorial: We have made it’s usage as easy as possible aboloshing menus and utilizing the master senses of people with low vision, hearing and touching, creating acousting instructions and creating gestures which allow it’s easy usage.

In this manner everybody who has low vision has the opportunity to use ICSee without any help from his social enviroment making him feel more indipendent. Whereas, anyone can download the ICSee application completely free on his android smartphone or tablet from GooglePlay by clicking here.

We are particulary happy when prominent organisations support our effort, organisations like ENIL ( European Network on Indipendent Living ) which posted our application ICSee on its Social Media following it with great commentary. Also, we have had the support of many Greek media with various article being written about SciFY and ICSee for example on Huffington Post Greece , Proto Thema , Vima and many more.

To sum it up, we would also like to thank the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, which thanks to it’s kind grant made it possible for us to create a better more improved version of the application ICSee.