Open Data Challenge

Accessibility and inclusive design are two of the main challenges for our modern digital society and the last barrier to provide actual digital solutions for every member of our society, regardless of their age, background, or physical and digital abilities.

Given that ICT and digital solutions have become core elements of our modern world, it is essential to provide services that everyone can benefit from with no one being left behind. Luxembourg’s digital transformation efforts bring along the risks of excluding certain members of society, however digital solutions can also be a lever of socio-economic inclusion. Only a fully digital society can guarantee the country’s well-being in the future and avoid a digital divide amongst its population, one of the main challenges to be tackled by the ministry for Digitalisation.

In particular, Open Data and the derived knowledge are important enablers of a more sustainable and digitally inclusive development for Luxembourg. We believe in this approach to inclusive design and solutions: using Open Datasets to create and innovate inclusive digital solutions that help unite our society in all its diversities.

The Challenge teams are expected to create new apps, services and visualizations that make use of data from the Open Data Portal (http://data.public.lu) to improve the social cohesion of our digital society, as for example in matters of mobility, healthcare, education or daily life habits. These new applications or tools should provide inclusive and accessible services to people that may be defined as digitally disadvantaged. This digital vulnerability can be linked to access, skills, motivation or trust.

Some examples might be:

• An accessible tool or application to use the Luxembourgish dictionary or wordlist to allow Luxembourgish voice controls, voice-to-text (or text-to-voice) messaging or speech recognition making phones and other digital devices more accessible for elderly and disabled people.
• An accessible navigation application that allows narrated step-by-step guidance through Luxembourg city to people with visual impairments.
• An accessible tool that allows the reading of Luxembourgish documents or texts of Luxembourgish authors.
• An accessible and inclusive application or tool to collect all the necessary municipal information on municipal activities/events/dangers/risks and present them in a user-friendly and accessible fashion.