Third prize in innovation competition

A team of Faculty of Information and Communication Technology students, namely Lee Wei Song, Kuek En Yee, Kwong Guan Yuan and Loh Jia Yee, was one of the third prize winners at the 3rd Malaysian-China Youth Innovation Competition, held on 29 June 2024 at Xiamen University Malaysia. The team took home a cash prize of RM 1,000 as the winning prize.

The competition this year saw participation from over 380 individuals, representing more than 50 projects from 20 universities across Malaysia.

The team enthused, “We are grateful to receive this recognition, and we want to express our gratitude to our lecturer Dr Aun Yichiet, who has guided and supported us continuously. His encouragement and expertise were crucial in helping us navigate the complexities of our project. We are also thankful to UTAR for providing us with the resources we need to bring this idea to life. The support we received was a powerful motivation and was helpful for us in overcoming challenges, thus also enabling us to focus on showcasing our innovation and creativity.”

The team’s winning project, titled “Enjoyable”, is an innovative audio descriptive method for videos. It is designed to help the visually impaired community to experience content through detailed and immersive audio descriptions. By transforming visual elements into rich, auditory narratives, Enjoyable enables the visually impaired to “see” and fully engage with videos like never before.

They further explained, “We were confident that our project would impress the judges because of its focus on inclusivity and its potential to make a real impact. We aimed to create something innovative that would enhance the lives of those who are often overlooked in the world of technology. By addressing a significant need for the visually impaired, we believe we presented a solution that truly resonated with the judges. We were excited to be able to showcase our innovative project on a global stage, and it was a good opportunity for us to challenge ourselves as we learned about the other innovative projects from other competing teams. Therefore, winning the prize was an honour for us. It validates the hard work and dedication poured out for this project. More importantly, it reinforces our belief in the project’s mission to make visual content accessible to the visually impaired community. We are thrilled to have our efforts recognised, and are motivated to continue pushing this project forward.”

The project is also closely aligned with several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being, SDG 10: Reduce Inequalities, and SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

They elaborated, “Enjoyable contributes to SDG 3 by enhancing the mental and emotional well-being of the visually impaired community. By providing them a way to experience visual content through immersive audio narratives, we are also helping to promote inclusivity and their overall quality of life. As for SDG 10, we see our project’s potential to bridge the gap between the visually impaired and the world of visual media. With videos becoming more accessible to them, we are actively working towards reducing inequalities and ensuring that everyone, regardless of their abilities, has equal access to the richness of visual content. We also believe that our project can help to create a more inclusive environment where the visually impaired individuals can participate fully in the cultural and social aspects of community life because as cities and communities grow, it is important to ensure that everyone has access to cultural and social resources, and information, as emphasised in SDG 11.”

The competition, jointly organised by Xiamen University Malaysia and The South Sea Capital Sdn Bhd, saw the FICT students’ participation in the undergraduate category. It was designed to ignite university students’ passion for innovation and entrepreneurship. It also aimed to foster global collaboration in innovation and entrepreneurship education, encouraging the exchange of resources such as projects, investments, and market opportunities. In addition, the competition sought to create a cooperative platform where university students could address global challenges together.

The competition was initiated by the Promotion Association for Global Youth Innovation Leaders Community (PILC) and co-organised by TusStar Malaysia, Koperasi Graduan Muda Kebangsaan Berhad (KoGRAD), New Century Hi-Tech Service (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, and Shanghai Guan’an Information Technology Corporation Limited with support from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Malaysia and the Malaysia-China Friendship Association.