Oko - Accessible Navigation App Wins Prestigious Apple Design Award for Inclusivity

By AppleVis, 6 June, 2024

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Apple has announced the winners of its 2024 Apple Design Awards, which honor excellence in innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement in app and game design across seven categories: delight and fun, inclusivity, innovation, interaction, social impact, visuals and graphics, and a new spatial computing category. The winners were chosen from 42 finalists.

Among this year's honorees is Oko - Accessible Navigation, which won in the Inclusivity category for providing a great experience for users from diverse backgrounds, abilities, and languages. According to Apple, β€œBy alerting pedestrians to the state of signal lights through haptic and audio feedback, Oko is an immediately impactful app for people who are visually impaired. It is a powerful solution to a critical safety scenario that takes advantage of Apple technologies including VoiceOver and Dynamic Type.”

Our huge congratulations go out to the team behind Oko.

Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, expressed her admiration for the winners, stating, β€œIt's inspiring to see how developers are using our technology to create exceptional apps and games that enhance the lives of users. This year's winners have demonstrated how apps can create powerful and moving experiences β€” and we're excited to celebrate their hard work and ingenuity at WWDC this year.”

Oko - Accessible Navigation joins the ranks of previous Apple Design Award winners such as Blackbox, a puzzle game that won in 2017 for its accessibility, uniqueness, gameplay, and innovations, as well as Be My Eyes and Voice Dream Reader, which were honored in 2021.

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Comments

By Ekaj on Monday, October 28, 2024 - 12:30

I just grabbed myself a copy of this app, and it seems pretty good. I haven't actually traveled with it yet. My outdoor O&M skills are not quite up to par, but perhaps that can and will change at least somewhat with this app. I know of at least 2 accessible pedestrian signals in the area, as well as one in downtown Chicago.