NI Students win finalist place in BT Young Pioneer Award

Two Northern Irish students are among the finalists announced for this year's BT Young Pioneer Award after inventing an amazing piece of technology to help blind people select clothes.

Students Tess Brady and Amy McMullan from St Killian’s College in Carnlough have been shortlisted as finalists in the upcoming Young Pioneer Award at the annual AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards. The award show celebrates companies and individuals who are using technology to make the world a better place, and the BT Young Pioneer Award focuses on young people between the age of 9 and 18 who have come up with great tech ideas.

Tess and Amy have developed a small handheld device they called "Be Seen Trendy" that can help blind people select clothes by reading NFC labels attached to coat hangars. The device is based on the tiny Raspberry Pi programmable computer and has the NFC chips it detects are cheap and easily available, making this a cost-effective solution that could be installed in a blind person's wardrobe or even integrated into high-end fashion shops.

The device helps blind people put together outfits by giving them information on garment type, colour materials, and crucially suggestions for other garments that will go with it based on current style trends. "There are devices currently available that identify the colour of clothes," the students explained, adding that "none match garments and provide fashion guidance as to what is trendy. 360,000 people are registered blind in the UK - we hope that this device will assist with independent selection of fashionable clothing combinations without the need for assistance."

If they win the BT Young Pioneer award, Tess and Amy are hoping to get professional help to develop the prototype device into a final marketable item and develop a phone app that it will work with. The invention has already been showcased at several events, and is really turning heads in the local tech scene.