Our colleague Eva Hollauf and her team at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences won the Salzburg Social Hackathon 2020 award for their Peyeoneer solution for independent hiking of visually impaired and blind people. The Social Hackathon has been sponsored by the State of Salzburg within the initiative Startup Salzburg.

100 master-degree students worked in teams over three days (19-21 March 2020) on 14 projects on challenges related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the teams of students in social innovation, product design, multimedia and technology collaborated on their hackathon challenges online.

Inspired by the GATE project, in which she prepares the Kinderleicht Wandern application, Eva proposed the inclusive tourism challenge „Hiking for Visually Impaired People” (challenge poster). The outcome of her team is Peyeoneer, the prototype of an application that enables visually impaired and blind people hiking independently.

Peyeoneer combines an easy to use smartphone app and the Peyeoneer gadget, which can be attached to any kind of cane. The digital hiking route is installed on the smartphone and synchronizes with the Peyeoneer gadget to give the user signals for orientation and information about objects on the way. An animated presentation describes the approach in greater detail (use with sound to get all information).

The Social Hackathon jury of experts in social innovation, interactive media and start-up incubation selected Peyeoneer as the winner in recognition of its convincing challenge, solution and social impact potential. Next the Peyeoneer team aims to be among the winners of the Austrian Social Impact Award to get project development funding and incubation support.