TfL announce winners of Accessible App Competition
TfL has named the winners of a competition to find new accessible apps to make it easier for disabled and older people to travel around London. The announcement came on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and follows a competition held between March and August this year. Developers were asked for ideas for new ‘Accessibility Apps’ which will make TfL real time information easier to use. All the entered apps use live information from TfL free of charge.
The best visually impaired app was London’s Nearest Bus, which allows the user to find the nearest buses and live departure times from their location. Users can also set individual bus alerts to trigger when a bus is due. The best app for accessibility/step free information is Station Master. This device offers detailed accessibility information for every London Underground, Overground and DLR station. The best all round app was Tube Tracker, a multi-modal app that finds the nearest station to the user with directions. It provides automatically updated live departure information, a journey planning function, first/last tubes and tube status alerts. The judges’ award went to the Colour Blind Tube Map, which displays the Underground map in various formats for easier viewing by people with all forms of colour blindness, as well as other vision impairments such as cataracts, loss of contrast sensitivity and hyperopia. In addition, TfL Fare Calculator, Citymapper and London Bus Times Preview were all Highly Commended.