Global IT Challenge for Youth with Disabilities 2023; Abu Dhabi is hosting the final round from October 25 to 27

For the first time in the Middle East and North Africa, Abu Dhabi Emirate will host the final round of the Global IT Challenge for Youth with Disabilities 2023 from October 25 to October 27. At the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC), 87 people from 15 countries are attending the event; an additional 406 participants from 13 countries are joining virtually. In cooperation with LG Electronics, the South Korean Ministry of Health and Social Care, and the Zayed Higher Organisation for People of Determination, the competition is run.

 The UAE qualified from the preliminary stages of competition, with five of the eight UAE teams earning a position in the finals, which will be held in Abu Dhabi from October 25 to 27, 2023. Together with many other local community organisations, the Zayed Higher Organisation for People of Determination led the collaborative efforts that made this accomplishment possible. With assistance from public and private organisations, such as the Abu Dhabi Polytechnic University, the Cybersecurity Council, the College of Engineering at the University of Al Ain, and CyberGate for Cybersecurity, they collaborated to train and get student teams with disabilities ready to take on the challenge.

The College of Engineering laboratories in Abu Dhabi provided the students with rigorous training programmes to hone their talents. Specialised areas of their training included PowerPoint presentation creation and editing challenges, Excel challenges, research and information utilisation challenges to use the internet to address everyday problems, an electronic creative challenge for smart cars that evaluated their mastery of Scratch programming for autonomous driving, and an electronic creative challenge for the Internet of Things (IoT). The goal of the lab engineer-supervised sessions was to provide students with the practical skills they would need to compete in the competition.

The contest takes place over two days, October 25 and 26, with two main competitions on the first day: "Electronic Content," which focuses on showcasing participants' creative abilities in creating and editing video clips on specific topics, and "E-Creative Smart Car," which evaluates participants' skills in using Scratch programming for self-driving cars.

 Four tasks are included in the first and second days of the competition. These tasks are designed to test participants' abilities to create and edit presentations, evaluate their professionalism in using functions and formulas, edit data in accordance with standards, measure their information search skills, apply their knowledge to solve real-world problems using the internet, and assess their capacity to make life easier for individuals with disabilities.

In an effort to close the digital gap for those with impairments, the Global IT Challenge for Youth with impairments (GITC) was founded in South Korea in 1992. With an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific area, GITC has expanded its scope to include young people with disabilities from all around the world since 2011. The competition's goal is to increase their social involvement by making higher education and career prospects more accessible to them. There are plans to further strengthen GITC in 2024 in order to guarantee the independence of participating countries and improve its worldwide image, therefore making it a more viable competition.