Title	VIAOPTA DAILY
Brand	NOVARTIS PHARMA
Product/Service	VIAOPTA DAILY SMARTPHONE APPLICATION
Category	G01. Patient Assisted Living
Entrant Company	ARWORKS Budapest, HUNGARY
Advertising Agency	ARWORKS Budapest, HUNGARY
Advertising Agency 2	STUDIO BINAR Vienna, AUSTRIA

Name	Company	Position
Mohanad Fors	Novartis Pharma Ag	Global Brand Manager
Stephane Wolf	Novartis Pharma Ag	Global Brand Director
Szabolcs Budaházy	Arworks Llc	Managing Director
Balázs Göltl	Arworks Llc	Creative Director
Ágoston Hényel	Arworks Llc	Project Manager
Ákos Szabó	Studio Binär Gmbh	Managing Director

The Brief

Many blind and low vision people are active smartphone users. Digital technology has an increasing role in special education for blind students. Visually impaired smartphone users are also deeply involved in social networking. Most applications available for visually impaired people come with a single function. Let’s make an app that fully exploits the functionality of a smartphone to help blind users in various routine but for them challenging tasks. Let’s add an interface to reflect the peculiarities of their usage of the device. Such an app would significantly increase the users’ independence and the quality of their lives.

Creative Execution

The ViaOpta global initiative demonstrates Novartis’ commitment to vision health by providing practical support to visually impaired people better understand and manage their condition. Mobile operating system and application developers increasingly focus on accessibility features. Screen reader technologies are now widely available such as VoiceOver, an option built into the iPhone’s general settings, or TalkBack that comes preloaded on Android phones. The ViaOpta Daily personal multi-function mobile application project was launched by Novartis in 2014. The first version - a member of a planned family of apps - was released in October 2014 for both iOS and Android operating systems. Since then extensive testing of the app has been done by hundreds of users to elevate phase 2 and 3 of the development and support the release of even more innovative versions of the app with new language versions and innovative functions in 2015.

The ViaOpta Daily application is freely available on iOS and Android in 12 languages. It excels in 8 functions by enhancing visual information or converting it to audible. Users launch the app in regularly repeating situations to cope with their visual challenges. The features of the app serve the users like a virtual Swiss Army knife. The app recognises colours and various banknotes, but also common objects and scenes and tells out the result loud. The magnifier is a single click loupe to help low vision users. The talking timer, contact book and weather report functions convert text to speech in the desired language. The ViaOptaDaily application received the European Excellence Award in 2014 and also won a Bronze Lion award at the Cannes Lions International Festival in 2015. It was shortlisted at the Cannes Lion Health, the IAB MIXX Awards in 2015.

Prior to and during the development of the ViaOpta Daily application extensive research was done by the developer with regards to readily available technologies, applications, platforms and sensors. Specials schools for the blind were consulted about the use of computers and smartphones by students of various ages. A large amount of information was collected and analysed from research done by healthcare organisations, government bodies, associations of blind and visually impaired people and companies involved with assistive health technology. All user interactions of ViaOpta Daily have been optimised to the unique needs and conditions of blind and visually impaired smartphone users.