New European Bauhaus Prizes 2023

Project category

Identify the award category for which this project is being submitted
Prioritising the places and people that need it the most

Email user
write@sheldon.studio

Basic information
Project title
Disabled Data

Full Project Title
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Please provide a short, catchy description of your project to be used in communication towards the public.
If we are not counted, how do we count? In addition to finally making Italian disability data available and accessible, Disabled Data brought the problem to light. Nobody in fact knows exactly how many disabled people there are in Italy. The national institute for statistics records the number through a sample survey that turned out to be inaccurate, compared to reality. How can laws be made on the subject if we do not even know how big the phenomenon is and who is part of it?

What was the geographical scope of your project?
National

Where was your project implemented?
Member State(s) and Western Balkans
Italy

If relevant, insert names of region(s)/municipality(ies) involved
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Does your project address mainly urban or rural issues?
It addresses urban-rural linkages

Does your project refer to a physical transformation of the built environment or other types of transformations (hard or soft investments)?
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)

Has your project benefited from EU programmes and/or funds?
No

Has your project won an EU prize with a monetary value awarded?
No

Is your project fully completed
Yes

Please indicate a date (mm/yy)
2022-12-02

On whose behalf are you submitting the application?
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
If you are submitting this project as part of a group, please provide the contact details of the other individuals or organisations
- Name of the organisation(s): Fight the Stroke, onData, Sheldon.studio
  Type of organisation: For-profit company + 2x Non-profit organisation
  First name of representative: matteo
  Last name of representative: moretti
  Gender: Male
  Nationality: Italy
  Function: Designer
  Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via dei portici, 70
  Town: Bolzano
  Postal code: 39100
  Country: Italy
  Direct Tel: +39 339 124 3736
  E-mail: matteo@sheldon.studio
  Website: https://sheldon.studio
- Name of the organisation(s): Fight the Stroke
  Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation
  First name of representative: Francesca
  Last name of representative: Fedeli
  Gender: Female
  Nationality: Italy
  Function: Founder
  Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via C. Gluck 35
  Town: Milano
  Postal code: 20125
  Country: Italy
  Direct Tel: +39 312 345 6789
  E-mail: info@fightthestroke.org
  Website: https://www.fightthestroke.org
- Name of the organisation(s): On Data
  Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation
  First name of representative: Andrea
  Last name of representative: Borruso
  Gender: Male
  Nationality: Italy
  Function: Founder
  Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Damiani Almeyda, 5
  Town: Palermo
  Postal code: 90141
  Country: Italy
  Direct Tel: +39 312 345 6789
  E-mail: aborruso@gmail.com
  Website: https://www.ondata.it
Social Media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)
- URL: https://www.instagram.com/sheldon.studio/
  Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): @sheldon.studio
In case my project is selected as a finalist of the NEB Prizes 2023, I agree to share the name (individual and/or organisation’s), email address, website and social media accounts indicated above with other NEB Prizes finalists. I also agree to publish the name (individual and/or organisation’s), website and social media accounts indicated above next to the public description of my project in the channels of the European Commission.
Yes

How did you hear about the New European Bauhaus Prizes?
word by mouth

Description of the project
Please provide a summary of your project.
Disabled Data is a project that made data about disability in Italy accessible. The project is by Fight the Stroke in collaboration with Sheldon.studio and onData. Disabled Data is grounded on a 6+ month long research, which revealed how open data on disability is inaccurate, patchy, and difficult to access. Other than being only a design problem, it was also a political and methodological one. This is how Disabled Data was born, a platform that makes all existing data on disability in Italy accessible, enabling:

• Citizens to discover the details of the phenomenon;
• Journalists to write about it in an informed and transparent manner;
• Policymakers to work on a deeper and informed knowledge base.

Another added value of Disabled Data is that it has given rise to a network of people whose work, experience, concern, or passion has to do with disability. It is a network of more than one hundred people, thanks to which it was possible to co-design the platform, giving voice to as many instances as possible. The same network has also fostered a greater impact of the project, which in less than a month has managed to bring the attention of the national media to a phenomenon as complex as it is little attended, such as disability data.

Lastly, Disabled Data also contains a gamified section, whose aim is to arouse curiosity by asking participants to guess numbers related to disability. Other than an engagement tool, this section is also a way for Fight the Stroke to collect anonymous data on the perception of the phenomenon and citizens' biases.

Please indicate the main themes of your project with 5 key words.
Disability

Please indicate the main themes of your project with key words
Data

Please indicate the main themes of your project with key words
Digital Common

Please indicate the main themes of your project with key words
Accessibility

Please indicate the main themes of your project with key words
Design for all

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of sustainability and how these have been met. Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context.
Community sustainability
Through a series of co-design workshops involving a wide and diverse audience of policymakers, journalists, data experts and people with disabilities, working online, it was possible to provide a tool to support the community. This allows them to work better and more sustainably, finally having data at their fingertips, accessible and easy to share.

Long-term sustainability
A final point with regard to sustainability is long-term sustainability. Thanks to the automated system that has been developed, data is updated automatically, without the need for manual intervention.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience for people (through design, positive emotions and cultural benefits) and how these have been met. Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context.
In Disabled Data, aesthetics plays a fundamental role, it becomes both an attractive and facilitating factor, making the data immediately accessible. In fact, it is aesthetics that makes the experience a quality experience. This was achieved through a series of collaborative design workshops, which allowed policymakers, journalists, data experts and people with disabilities to contribute and have their voices heard. This approach made it possible, for example, to develop an algorithm capable of narrating the content of graphs to people with visual impairments, something that is quite rare and little explored.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of inclusion (ranging from accessibility and affordability for all to inclusive governing systems, design for all principles or new societal models) and how these have been met. Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context.
Inclusion was the dominant value of the entire design process, and of course of the project output. The project allows a wider audience to access disability data, offering a zoomable and easy-to-explore interface, specifically great attention was given to:

People with visual impairment
Disabled Data is one of the first online platforms to have its own algorithm able to tell the content of the graphs. In addition to all the elements to navigate the data, screen readers can thus support users in discovering trends and even the data of each individual element.

Colour-blind people
The use of specific design, contrasts and colour choices ensure that all screen elements are easily recognisable by everyone, in fact the design was validated by people with colour blindness.

Please explain the way citizens benefiting from or affected by the project and civil society have been involved in the project and what has been the impact of this involvement on the project
Several citizens, such as parents, students, professionals, people with disabilities, or interested in the topic, participated in the collaborative design workshop. Thanks to their points of view, concerns, and wishes, it was possible to shape a project that was inclusive of all the demands raised by the project recipients. Whether concerned citizens, policymakers, activists, or journalists can thus draw on reliable and transparent information, as well as incorporate the graphics made available by Disabled Data into their projects, contributing to a more transparent and informed debate on disability.

Please explain how different stakeholders at various levels (local, regional, national, European) were engaged in the design and implementation of the project. Please highlight what the added value of their engagement was.
Completed in December 2022, the project was developed in Italy, involving national and local stakeholders. From people from ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) to activists and journalists, the project brought together National and hyperlocal stakeholders. They sat at the same table to discuss the Italian disability data, and how to improve the situation from a methodological, content, accessibility, and data availability perspective.

Please explain which disciplines and/ or knowledge fields were reflected in the design and implementation of your project. Please explain how representatives of these different fields interacted with each other, and what the added value of this process was.
The project involved the collaboration of

Designers
Thanks to their support, it was possible to shape the project, including all the voices and feedback that emerged during the co-design workshops. It is also thanks to the designers that these workshops were possible. The designers were able to frame Disabled Data as a real digital commons.

Activists
The role of the activists was fundamental in informing the design process, helping the designers to understand the demands made by the different activist groups.
They were approached by
activists for open data
activists for inclusive cities
digital activists
digital disability activists

Data scientists
Prior to the transformation process of transforming a formless mass of data into a neat and tidy dataset, data scientists enabled the team to collect data in an automated manner. This greatly accelerated the work, as well as facilitated that of analysing and narrating the data.

Data journalists
Data journalists have managed to create a solid and transparent narrative on the Italian disability data phenomenon. This has enabled other journalists to understand and be able to write about it with ease.

Developers
Developers, too, were confronted with a usually distant world that pushed them and involved them in taking care of interface accessibility and usability.

Please give information on the results, outcomes and impacts achieved by your project in relation to the category you apply for. This includes also benefits from the project for direct and indirect beneficiaries
Thanks to the important network of institutional and non-institutional actors who participated in the collaborative planning, it was possible to achieve a very high media interest. In fact, more than ten national newspapers (Corriere della Sera, Il Post, Valigia Blu, Radio 24, Il Sole 24, Wired, Vita, Infodata, etc.) devoted ample space to the project within a month from the date of publication, bringing attention to the data on disability in Italy.

Please provide documents showing the results, outcomes and impacts of your project
Both
PDF
- pdf-1-3674.pdf
Web link
- https://disableddata.fightthestroke.org/en/
Please highlight the innovative character of the project, when compared to mainstream actions in the field of the project
Disabled Data is currently unique. There are in fact no open data portals on disability in Italy that offer such a high level of accessibility. This is in fact the reason why it was created. The official site, that of ISTAT, does not present data on disability in a clear, immediate, and above all accessible and easy-to-share manner. At the European level, Eurostat offers only some data on disability at the Italian level, and again the steps needed to go back to a specific dataset are multiple and not always clear. The hope is that the institutional actors can continue the work we have done, rethinking the whole chain of data on disability from their collection to their online sharing.

Please describe the methodology or approach used in your project.
From the design point of view, the primary methodology was that of collaborative design, described above, which made it possible to bring together and give voice to a diverse range of people and professions. The collaborative design came to life thanks to a series of workshops involving both the professionals directly involved and domain experts, such as activists connected to the world of data and gender issues. Thanks to the workshops, it was possible to give voice to all possible demands, from data access to those related to inclusive language.

In terms of data, these were collected in an automated manner both from the national ISTAT site and from Eurostat, and then reorganised by topic and interest.

Please describe which elements of your project could be replicated or transferred to other places, groups of beneficiaries and context. This may involve for example aspects of the methodology, technology, processes, products, learnings etc.
The methodology in general allows the project to be replicated. This is based on the development of local networks made up of institutional actors, local associations and citizens united by their experience with the phenomenon of disability and related data. Subsequently, the work of systematising the data is specific to their nature and structure, so the process is ad hoc and cannot be slavishly replicated.

Please explain what kind of global challenges the project addresses by providing local solutions
The global challenge that the project addresses is that of more inclusive societies. At a time when more than 5 billion citizens consume and produce data on a daily basis online, we can say that the net, and specifically data, can be a true mirror of modern society. If data on specific communities are not available, the risk is that they will not be contemplated, especially when it comes to creating laws, funding, or measures to support them.
With Disabled Data, people with disabilities are once again represented in the data, minus the collection problems, which the project cannot solve, but which it has brought to the attention of the media.
Please attach at least 6 high resolution images (or other types of visual representations, if images are not possible) to your application.
If you would like to upload additional documentation, please upload or write below
- NEUAW-Disabled Data.pdf
By submitting your application you confirm that you are the copyright owner of the images provided and that they can be used by the European Commission for the purposes of promoting the New European Bauhaus on all platforms (websites, print, social media and other).
Yes

By ticking this box, you declare that you are not in in one or more of the exclusion situations foreseen under Article 136 of the Financial Regulation.
Yes

By submitting this application, I declare that I am not related to the entities subject to EU restricted measures under Article 29 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and subject to Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU)1, and entities covered by Commission Guidelines No 2013/C 205/05), which are not eligible to participate in any capacity.
Yes

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that you assume sole liability in the event of a claim relating to the activities carried out in the framework of the contest, that the proposed project has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Prizes in any other category or strand and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.
Yes

By submitting your application, you guarantee that you are the author or have the rights to proceed with the application and to authorise the use of the project and that you have obtained any necessary consents, licenses or assignments from third parties and included copyright notices when necessary.
Yes

By submitting your application, you understand that all the applications that meet the eligibility requirements will be shared for the purposes of the selection processes, and notably published on the secured platform prizes.new-european-bauhaus.eu and for the purposes of the promotion of these on the New European Bauhaus website and/or other European Commission communication channels. In this sense, the applications would be widely available. Applicants should ensure that they present their projects, in such a way that they could be shared without giving rise to intellectual property related concerns. If your submission is selected as one of the finalists, it will additionally be shared for the purpose of the public vote that will take place. The European Union is granted a licence to use and share your application with the general public and the official external experts for the purposes of the selection process, including the voting. The European Union has the right to use the images and visual materials and the description provided in the application for communication purposes related to the contest and beyond. Rights granted comprise the right to store, reproduce, display, publish and communicate or distribute copies in electronic or digital format, including, but not only, through the internet. Unless you have disclosed your name, the European Commission has no obligation to share your name when using or disseminating your contribution to the public. The European Union cannot be held responsible in case any submitted project, is found to infringe third party’s rights. The European Union shall be neither responsible for the use that third parties may do of the applications or related content.
Yes

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you read and understand that the ‘Guide to Applicants’ of the NEB Prizes 2023, available online in the website of the NEB Prizes 2023, is an integral part of this application form and that it must therefore be observed when completing and submitting your application.
Yes