The FCC challenged the public to share visions of how cloud computing can create new opportunities for people with disabilities.

Winners will be honored at a ceremony in Washington D.C.

The presentation can use any combination of video, audio, photos, graphics, text, or other presentation media, with any natural language, as long as it is accessible to a broad audience, including people with disabilities.  Typically -- though not necessarily -- the presentation will be a video.  If so, it should be no more than 7 minutes in length, and be designed so that it is accessible when opened as a link through challenge.gov. In particular, a video presentation should support the viewing of English captions and the operation of controls with a screen reader.  Contestants should upload the video to a site like YouTube.com or Vimeo.com and post its link to challenge.gov.  

Note that although YouTube has robust support for captioning, contestants should not expect to use its auto-captioning functionality, as the accuracy is insufficient.  Contestants can use one of various free or paid tools for creating captions manually and accurately.  Instructions for uploading video in various formats are available at the YouTube web site.  Links to more guidance are also included elsewhere on this web site.

Adding video description for blind viewers is also desirable.  Since tools and techniques for this are not widespread, however, contestants may instead describe the vision and presentation thoroughly in an accompanying document.

Submission Procedures

• Create an accessible multimedia presentation of up to seven minutes in length. We expect most presentations will be between three and five minutes long, but will accept a maximum of seven minutes.
• Create or use an account on a media-sharing web site, and upload the presentation there, e.g., to
  • http://youtube.com
  • http://vimeo.com
  • Or another website where the presentation may be stored, and where a link for rendering it in a web browser is created.

Tag the presentation with the official title of this challenge: Lifted by the Cloud.

• Also add the following language to the description of the presentation:

This presentation has been submitted as part of a contest sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities, and Raising the Floor, located on the web at http://challenge.gov/challenges/82

The presentation does not carry the endorsement, or necessarily reflect views, of the sponsors.

• Create or use an account on challenge.gov. Find the web page for this challenge, and complete the form that prompts for information about a solution. It will include the contestant's name, title of the presentation, and a link to its location on a media-sharing web site.

If a contestant wishes to drop an entry from consideration in the contest, this may be done by removing it from challenge.gov before the submission deadline.