On December 23, the ceremony of awarding the winners of the XI CSR Case Competition took place in the frame of the National Award for Celebrating Corporate Social Responsibility Projects Aimed at Realization of Sustainable Development Goals by Companies.
SoftServe‘s “Accessibility Testing for Web Applications course for the Visually Impaired” projects won in nomination – Goal 10 “Reducing Inequality” and the “Grain of Truth” crowdfunding platform and corporate ambassadorial program in support of the Holodomor Museum won nomination “Business that supports culture and art”.
The first competition was launched in 2009, among the partners of the XI CSR Case Competition: EY Ukraine, Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. This year, 40 cases from participating companies were presented. Together with SoftServe in the category “Reduction inequality” 1 + 1 media holding was awarded, and in the category “Business that supports culture and art” – the KredoBank company.
SoftServe has been working for a long time for its customers on Accessibility Service, one of the types of software testing, which aims to make sure that the web-product, mobile application, etc. – are convenient for people with different types of disorders: vision, hearing, mentality, musculoskeletal. As soon as the ordinary end users of the product cannot give definitive conclusions about availability, because they often do not know what to look for, SoftServe decided to teach people with visual impairments to test and involve them in the company.
“At SoftServe we care about diversity and inclusion and strive to make our products user-friendly for everyone. By involving visually impaired people to the development of IT solutions, testing our designs for usability by people with the same problems, we offer a new level of accessibility testing. At the same time, we have the opportunity to provide such people with important and interesting work, together with comfortable working conditions”says the QC engineer and coordinator of the Accessibility Testing group at SoftServe, Viktoriya Shyryayeva.
It is worth noting that the Accessibility Testing project previously took first place in the competition for the project “Accessibility Testing for Web Applications course for the Visually Impaired” in the competition of the UN Global Compact in Ukraine in the category “Society”.
As part of the Grains of Truth project of the International Charitable Foundation for the Development of the Holodomor Memorial, SoftServe pro bono has developed a fundraising platform for the project and launched a powerful ambassadorial program, which has already raised about 3 million UAH.
“We are extremely pleased to join projects of such importance and significance for the country. SoftServe provides its services mainly abroad, however, we feel the need to join local initiatives and make positive changes in Ukraine – in the communities where we work and live. That is why SoftServe is often a partner of various public organizations, which we help on a probationary basis with what we are strong at – to change the world for the better with the help of technology, ”said Maria Kucherenko, Head of CSR and PR at SoftServe.
The “Grains of Truth” platform (zernapravdy.org) was created to collect charitable contributions in order to implement the project of the main exposition of the Holodomor Museum. The site features interactive beads that symbolize the commemoration of each individual victim. The smallest monetary contribution opens to the benefactor a personal “grain” – a person who died of the Holodomor with the name, age and place of death.