The second edition of the Ask & Hack project is underway
There are initiatives which, although operating on a local scale, have the power to speak a universal language, that of breaking down barriers through shared creativity. With this in mind, Ask & Hack was created, a project promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale ETS in collaboration with Sys-Tek srl, which offers an innovative workshop format to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities through technological co-design. The initiative involves secondary school students, young people with disabilities and university tutors in a shared learning and experimentation process.
After the success of the first edition, which featured students from the Andriano di Castelnuovo don Bosco high school in the province of Asti and young people from the CoorDown Association, this year's project aims to create a real generational and social bridge. This year's edition will focus on the theme of mobility and accessible driving for young people with visual impairments, involving students in their final three years at the Convitto Nazionale Umberto I in Turin and young people with visual impairments and blindness, thanks to the valuable collaboration with the association ‘Buio in Pista’ and the National Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Turin.
With an experiential workshop format, participants will attend four training sessions, led by Fondazione Mondo Digitale trainers Francesca Formaggio and Matteo Jacopo Lingua, learning how to develop applications and exploring the principles of visual design and accessibility-oriented programming. The course will culminate in a final challenge, a hackathon, scheduled for 20 February at the Cna Torino, where participants, divided into mixed teams, will work to propose creative digital solutions to the real needs of young people with visual impairments.
"It was immediately an interesting challenge that intrigued me. It will certainly be an adventure that will prove formative for me as well. The goal is to help these young people with new technologies that could also prove to be an aid in their daily lives,‘ comments Francesca.
’I chose to renew the Ask & Hack challenge because the beauty of this project is that it can involve everyone. This year, I expect to see truly innovative solutions that can transform technology into a real additional sense for these young people. It's not an extra commitment in my diary, but an opportunity to give real meaning to what I do every day," adds Matteo.
It is in contexts such as this that co-design finds its maximum expression, transforming diversity into the real engine of innovation; bringing together people and worlds that are apparently distant allows us to overcome the fatigue of the individual in the joy of sharing. And this, perhaps, is the invisible ingredient of the second edition of the Ask & Hack project: a vision capable of translating a digital intuition into a concrete opportunity for autonomy and the future, or at least, of imagining it.
