Jodi Awards

Nominations increased fourfold for the Second International Jodi Award. The quality and range of engagement were impressive. The Panel of Judges faced the challenge of shortlisting five nominations. For the first time two websites presenting city spaces and encouraging cultural tourism activities feature in the shortlist.

The shortlisted websites are:

Berlin fuer Blinde, www.berlinfuerblinde.de. Sighted and visually impaired journalists map the multi-sensory delights of Berlin, including in museums and public parks.

New York Beyond Sight, www.nybeyondsight.org. Audio descriptions of New York’s major urban heritage sites, recorded on location by a multitude of voices.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, www.americanart.si.edu/education/asl/. The Art Signs Online programme takes an incremental approach to making collections accessible to deaf people.

Southern Trondelag Museum, www.norsk-dovemuseum.no/. The new Norwegian national museum of deaf history and culture’s website is easy to use and clear.

Vision Australia, www.visionaustralia.org.au. The library’s i-access Online service makes 140 newspapers available in accessible format for visually impaired people.

Guest-Judge Nick Poole, Collections Trust CEO and Chair of the Europeana Council of Content Providers and Aggregators, said:

“Technology has revolutionised the ways in which cultural organisations worldwide engage and communicate with their users. The scope and quality of this year’s entrants to the International Jodi Awards are a testimony to the way in which our industry is embracing this opportunity across borders and cultures.

Each of the shortlisted services exemplifies something innovative and vital about the way technology can enable and enhance access for disabled people, and it has been really invigorating and a great honour to have been involved as a guest judge and to be part of the international discussions about the shortlist. I am particularly excited to see such excellent projects which blend online and offline tools to improve the quality of life.”

The International Jodi Award will be given in Brussels on 20 September as part of the European Congress on E Inclusion (ECEI10), ‘Delivering a Digital Europe in Public Libraries’, an official EU Belgian Presidency event hosted by the Flemish Community and Civic Agenda. They will be presented by Christine Clause, Secretary General of the Department for Culture, Youth, Sports and Media of the Flemish Government.

The International Jodi Award is for museums, galleries, libraries, archives and heritage websites which widen access to information, collections, learning and creativity for disabled people. They are also for websites by other organisations with a focus on museum, gallery, library, archive and heritage collections.

First given in the UK in 2003, European Year of Disabled People, the Jodi Awards celebrate practice that inspires locally, nationally or internationally.

The Jodi Awards for accessible digital culture are about disabled people gaining access to information, collections, learning and creativity. They are annual. They are given by the Jodi Mattes Trust.

The Jodi Awards are for museums, galleries, libraries, archives, heritage venues and disability organisations which use digital technology to provide a shared experience for disabled people.

Previous Winners talk about enhanced recognition, new partnerships, funding opportunities and developments.

Nominated projects focus around museum, libary, archive and heritage collections, as well as exhibitions. The deadline for Nominations for the Jodi Awards UK is Friday 10 September 2010.