3 Worcester students win national award for app that helps the visually impaired
WORCESTER ― Three seniors at the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, who created an app to assist people who are visually impaired, were recognized Thursday for winning the 2023 Congressional App Challenge.
The three students – Anne Tie, Amy Chen and Nihitha Reddy – spent months perfecting the code and concept for their app, LaunchGuide. When asked what inspired creation of the app, the students said they drew inspiration during their time as members of district 33A of the Lions Club, specifically the Walkfit program created by visually impaired Worcester attorney Liz Myska.
Walkfit's aim is to increase awareness surrounding visually impaired pedestrians.
"The goal [of the app] is to promote more security for those who are visually impaired to feel more confident to walk around, especially in Worcester," Tie said.
Through Walkfit, the students connected with Jack Peacock, owner of a company that makes assistive technology that helps people with hearing and vision loss or certain cognitive disorders that hinder effective communication. While Peacock is not visually impaired, the students were able to lean on his expertise working with those who are, and said working with him allowed his ideas to come to life as an app.
"It increases accessibility, in a sense, so that people with phones can also have access to the product we created," Tie said. "So throughout making the app, we'd check in with him, and it was kind of eye-opening to see how much we take for granted as people with vision."
The students had to think about the target audience for the app: those with visual impairments.
"The user design is a very visual thing, so for people with limited or no vision, it kind of made us think outside the box in terms of high contrast, wallpaper and color schemes and a more streamlined design," Tie said. "[Peacock] really opened our eyes to that."
The Congressional App Challenge engages students creatively and encourages their participation in STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math. It is a nationwide competition where high school students compete against their peers. Only a handful of students from each state won the award.
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern visited the students to congratulate them on receiving the award.
"At the beginning of the project, we were not confident that we were going to be able to make something functional," Chen said. "So, coming out of it and actually winning an award that's nationally recognized felt really good. It felt good to know that what we did was good work and that other people recognized it was too."
The app creation took months of work. Tie, Chen and Reddy said they were unfamiliar with coding before they began their project.
"It was really hard to get it done and we were able to implement every feature we wanted and make it look nice," Chen said. "It really felt like a completed product, not just something like haphazardly slapped together."
The pride Tie, Chen and Reddy felt when they finished the app was gratifying, Reddy said.
"It was very rewarding, because leading up to that, the last week up to it our app crashed and we were like, 'Oh my God, what do we do now?'" Reddy said. "I felt so proud of us too because there were so many challenges and we kind of felt like giving up but we stayed determined and motivated to get through it."
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Mass. Academy of Math and Science students win congressional award
