Helm Egypt started when co-founders, Amena El-Saie and Ramez Maher, came face-to-face with the difficulties that people with disabilities experience.
El-Saie attended Dialogue in the Dark and felt what it was like to be blind for 90 minutes.
“Dialogue in the Dark is an awareness-raising exhibition, where blind guides guide visitors in absolute darkness. You get a chance to experience common activities, like walking down the street, visiting a market or taking a boat cruise in specially designed darkened rooms,” says El-Saie.
Meanwhile, Maher had his own experience with disability, after sitting next to a blind man at university.
“During a video presentation, my blind classmate kept asking me to explain to him what was happening. The video was missing one simple element – a voice over – which was the reason my blind classmate had no idea what was going on,” says Maher.
After graduating from the American University in Cairo, the two friends were working at an e-learning company in Egypt and soon realised that they had a common passion. They wanted to create an inclusive society for people with disabilities. And so, at the age of 24 and with $700 in their bank account, they quit their jobs and started Helm.
Helm, translating to “Dream”, is a non-profit organisation that promotes the full participation of people with disabilities, in all aspects of life. It focuses on breaking social and physical barriers to empower people with disabilities.
To achieve its mission, Helm focuses on the training and development of people with disabilities, and ensures that private and public premises are accessible to all. It ensure new constructions in Egypt are accessible to all and that necessary modifications are made in existing locations through the “Achievable Barrier Removal” process.
Since launching in 2014, Helm has supported over 1500 people with disabilities in Egypt.
Using mobile technology to communicate accessibility
“We wanted to tell people with disabilities which venues in Egypt have barriers and make all locations accessible. So we launched Entaleq, in partnership with Vodafone Egypt Foundation,” says El-Saie.
Entaleq is an innovative mobile app and website that provides information about the level of accessibility at different venues. Users are able to navigate venues based on accessibility features that best fit their specific needs.
One of the main purposes of Entaleq is to evaluate a venue’s accessibility and rate it accordingly. Helm has a “barrier removal team” that uses a mobile app to gather data and assess the level of accessibility at each venue, based on international accessibility standards.
Helm’s team then works with a venue’s team to customise effective solutions to meet international standards. These venues are listed on Entaleq, giving them exposure and providing people with disabilities with the information they need to make their lives easier.
In October 2016, Helm was ready to expand and decided to apply for an Azure grant from Microsoft. By moving their offering to Azure, they were able to host all of their solutions on one cloud-based platform, ensuring the success of Enteleq.
Doing more with less
With the help of Microsoft and its Azure platform, Entaleq now has an automated evaluation system for locations and an automated report generation solution. This saves time and money for the assessors, allowing them to assess more places in less time and at a fraction of the cost. The team simply adds the accessibility features for each location, extracts an automatic report and presents it to users on the app.
“The venue assessors rely on the availability and stability of the assessment application. Since they are frequently updating the application and adding new venues, Azure’s backup and restore feature is crucial,” says El-Saie.
“Azure’s automatic deployment and continuous integration has also helped reduce the number of people required to develop software and reduced the time and effort required for deployment.”
In time, the team plans to start using Azure’s tools for data analysis and data mining to extract meaningful insights from the data collected and make informed decisions about how to improve their operations.
Support through skills and training
In order to ensure Helm is able to make the most of its new technology solutions, Microsoft supports the organisation through mentorship and training. Microsoft hosts regular meetings with the team and supports them in using Azure tools to improve the Entaleq app and website.
Going forward, Microsoft will continue to partner with Helm to build the capabilities of people with disabilities and improve their chances of finding employment.
“Time and resources are limited in non-profit organisations like ours. Microsoft’s cloud grant has helped Helm save time and money and provided a stable application and website that people with disabilities can access easily, ultimately allowing them to become more independent,” concludes El-Saie.
