For migrants anywhere in the EU, uugot.it increases their safety, security and independence by enabling them to follow, in their own language, timely and verified public broadcasts about COVID-19 through an internet connection.
Inspiration
Local governments and public authorities use media every hour of every day to convey the latest and most important information and public measures about COVID-19.
However, migrants with a different mother tongue dangerously cut off from this critical information stream, simply due to basic language barriers. They are subject to an unfair and unfortunate information deficit. As a result of this inevitable deficit, they feel and are less secure; they are more dependent on others, to make time, to take care, and to translate for them the news and life-saving information. They are discouraged from attempting education and learning because they cannot operate in the local language. They are more prone to inaccurate and personal opinions, as well as to fake news, since they are not able to reliably verify, either quickly or slowly, the information they receive.
Our ambition: Increase migrant sense of safety and confidence in order to accelerate societal integration and the shared journey towards social cohesion.
The challenge:
- How will migrants gain easy access to accurate and verified critical public information?
- How will migrants increase their comfort and confidence in their new city and country, allowing them to independently secure for themselves and their families some readily accessible needs for home-language safety messages, distance education, and other family-critical communications?
As an answer to this challenge, uugot.it offers an application that allows migrants to fully understand TV news, broadcasts, adult education, streamed and on-demand programming accessed via an internet connection.
What it does
uugot.it is an app for smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs that provides streaming of up-to date TV broadcasts and on-demand video material. It can be downloaded from here: www.uugot.it/download/ - or directly accessed as a web app at app.uugot.it.
The app includes the following features:
- When users consume the selected programmes, uugot.it adds interactive same-language subtitles, according to the user’s preferences.
- When users are unsure about a single word, term or phrase they hear, they simply click on the unknown word and immediately get a translation on the screen to their language of choice.
- Each of these words, terms or phrase is remotely stored in a customized vocabulary database synchronized across devices that the users can access any time.
The following foreign languages are currently available: Arabic, English, Spanish, Dari/Farsi, French, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Italian, Romanian, Russian Every word clicked on is saved and can be retrieved in the Learning Section. This way users are constantly increasing their language learning.
How we built it
We built an app for Android smartphones as well as for the web and iOS devices. Our tech stack consists mainly of open source frameworks and technologies like node.js, TypeScript, MongoDB, Angular, Ionic, Express. Recently we started using Python for natural language processing (NLP). We will use NLP to enrich the information the system has about each word in the context it is used. This will derive in an improved translation by reducing error rate and offering translation alternatives.
In terms of user experience (UX) we chose a new and innovative way for users to learn languages by adding interactive subtitles to videos. During the hackathon we were able to prove that our solution can be easily transferred to other regions by integrating broadcasts from other EU countries.
Challenges we ran into
We can a across a couple of challenges during the hackathon, but because of a great team effort, we could jump over these hurdles:
- One of our team members got ill in the night from Friday to Saturday, so we hat to improvise but still could achieve some great results.
- Only two people knew each other before the hackathon, in the end we were a team of people from four countries.
- We had to overcome some technical challenges but in the end we found good solutions.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
At the time, as exchange Erasmus students, we learned the difficulties experienced by foreigners in a country whose language is not their own. Either we could live disconnected from the society or we find some new way to quickly make an on-ramp for ourselves into the society of we desperately wished to be a member.
This spirit led us to the idea of creating an application that would help break the language barrier quickly and make foreigners feel more integrated with the society they live in.
What's next for uugot.it - adding multilingual component to regional news
The next step will be to bring this solution to other countries and to seek possibilities with EU/member states to finance the expansion and ongoing operations of uugot.it.
We developed the first scalable solution that combines language learning and integration; it works with people in a natural setting where they learn more efficiently.
uugot.it has already been user-tested and has been rolled out in Austria. It has already been recommended by the Austria’s Federal Ministry of Education, Science & Research as a key resource for new immigrants. It is also in use for adult education and distance learning.
During the EUvsVirus hackathon we developed a next-generation prototype that demonstrates that our existing solution is an excellent platform for scale-up and implementation into further EU countries.
uugot.it has multiple revenue streams which are already approved and we’re mainly focusing on our B2G and B2B model. The B2G model allows provinces, municipalities and states to offer uugot.it to their target group. In return an agreed price is paid which is usually determined for a year. The B2B model allows uugot.it being used in educational institution and companies. Therefore a user-based license fee is paid (so called SaaS – Software-as-a-Service model).
uugot.it is the perfect companion that supports mobility within Europe. It helps individuals as well as town, cities and countries accelerate of the process of integration towards much-needed social cohesion.
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