Microsoft Imaginecup Global Competition
Undefeated since 2000.
Birth trauma took her hands. It wasn’t going to take her life. For Eugene, it meant a ten-year fight. Today, Eugene felt her hour of triumph when she was honored with a 2′nd prize award at Imagineup Global competition finals in Moscow. She is the very active member of GRAViTONUS team. During this most prestigious competition she was using ACCS device and the beta of ACCS ToolKit software and virtually leading the demonstration of e-learning innovations for handicapped people by Gravitonus. Dr Kosik and company’s CIO Taras had no other option other than to act like simple assistants during her presentation and then join the audience of 1000, charmed by her skills, in rising in applause.
This international competition of educational projects is organized by Microsoft. Dmitriy Soshnikov, manager of the academic programs of the department of the strategic technologies of the Russian office Microsoft, stated that the purpose of this competition is “to let talented teams to be oriented in the world of software industry, to prompt to them as to convert their most daring ideas into the final software projects and to move them further to the market”.
Imagine Cup Competition is conducted since 2003 and it is the largest technological competition in the world - the last year more than 65 thousands participants from 100 countries were competing.
Alex Kosik: “The biggest market of the future - according to Sir David Puttnam, UK President of Unicef - will be the education industry. Children and adults with quadriplegia not only have the right to an education, they have the right to be part of the mainstream education system. However, they are limited in their physical capabilities. A person with quadriplegia has the same desires as a healthy individual - to work, to amuse himself, to communicate with his friends and to get education - but is severely limited in the means to achieve them. In support of those fighting illnesses like quadriplegia, ALS and myodistrophia, we’re committing all of our energies and resources to fighting the effects of the serious diseases. ImagineCup 2007 is empowering the creation of software educational technologies and our Award is the best demonstration of importance of distant education accessibility for handicapped people. The ultimate goal of ACCS Toolkit is to provide a transparent user interface, so that quadriplegics, who cannot use their hands to control PC, could focus on their activities and not on the interaction with hardware input device and software interface, created for a healthy person initially. Basically, it allows person to get education, find a good job and become self sustainable.”
