InSync

Inspiration

At the start of our 24 hour journey, as a team, we were set on doing something that would be bold and different to what we had all ever done before. After an hour of researching and brainstorming, we arrived at the idea of creating a Chrome extension that would benefit others and increase the accessibility of the web to those who may find it a little more difficult to interact with. Through this we created a feature list of things we would like the extension to include, such as: Colour overlays, changing the colour and size of the text. It was a highly challenging task, but we made much more progress than we all expected!

What it does

Our project is a Chrome extension which includes the ability to add overlay colours on top of websites, etc that you are accessing on the web and also includes the basic feature of being able to change the text colour to the users preference. Both of these can be done simultaneously to enhance the user experience. Unfortunately, we were unable to add additional complex features to the system e.g. image scanning to suit those with colour blindness and similar impairments, however, we can build upon what we already have to further develop it after possibly gaining user feedback.

How we built it

We built this project by delving further into the world of web development and gaining more knowledge on languages used within it, including JavaScript, CSS and HTML. We also experimented with React to build our user interface and quickly found that it was more complex than we expected. As a team we researched various functions and methods that we were able to use within these languages to increase the efficiency of our work pace as well as the program itself.

Challenges we ran into

At many points throughout the day, we considered changing projects as a large amount of the team had never worked with CSS before and it proved to be a great learning curve for us as a whole. However, by continuously researching various aspects of the language we were able to support each other and remain resilient in the process. When experimenting with React, our interface didn't do as we expected and we spent more time switching back to CSS code, with a large proportion of our time being taken up - We did pull through in the end to produce something we are all proud of.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overall, we are all very pleased with the product we have produced, as we all know that we had very little experience in the field and we still managed to produce more than we thought we would at the start of the process. We effectively worked with the code to improve accessibility and also experienced the adventure of creating a web extension. As a team, we developed a variety of skills in the process, from working with new languages and learning how various languages within CSS actually work together to create a product. Teamwork was an essential skill needed in this to both keep us motivated and create a working product. In the past day or so, we have all benefitted from the experience as we have broadened our knowledge on working in a team to create a web extension.

In the future, the web extension definitely has the capacity to be improved to add features that would be more beneficial to those who may struggle to interact with default features. From researching the industry, there are very few apps and features available to people and this could be a credit to people.