Hackney app for blind people wins £35,000 at national tech awards

A Hackney app that uses smartphone technology to help vision-impaired people navigate buildings on their own has been honoured at a national tech competition.

Wayfindr, founded four years ago, was a winner in the “not-for-profit” category at the Vodafone Techstarter Awards earlier this month.

It won £35,000 funding and will now benefit from access to industry and tech experts from the phone company’s Social Tech Trust.

Yannis Psomadakis, head of technology at the app, said: “We are delighted and we are looking forward to working with Vodafone to achieve our goal of helping vision impaired people travel independently using smartphone technology.”

Managing director Florence Orban added: “We can’t believe the chance we have. It’s like prize day for us.

“At the moment the app is very focused on working with iPhones so the opportunity is to go and develop the Android interface. Also the app is based on getting signals from beacons to get accuracy of positioning and working with Vodafone what we really want to do is explore how that could work with WiFi and 5g.”