PARTNERS

The BeauCoup consortium is composed by 10 grant participants plus 1 associated partner.

Moritz Neumüller (ArteConTacto) is an associated partner of BeauCoup and will assist in the development of the Cultural Heritage content and the communication with the participating museums.

ArteConTacto is a project dedicated to artistic practice, inclusion, and multisensorial experiences. The project is driven by workshops and participatory art experiences, with people who have special needs, and special questions towards art. Their differences and difficulties associated with perception, memory, cognition and communication enable them to look for other things in the artistic experience than “normal” people. ArteConTacto was founded in 2009, and has since participated in initiatives such as the award-winning EU-project ARCHES, and the online museum database MuseumForAll.

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest non-university research institute. With its seven Centers, AIT regards itself as a highly specialised research and development partner for industry.

Its researchers focus on the key infrastructure issues of the future: Energy, Health & Bioresources, Digital Safety & Security, Vision, Automation & Control, Low-Emission Transport, Technology Experience and Innovation Systems & Policy.

The Center for Technology Experience deals with fundamental questions on the interaction between people and technology. Based on interdisciplinary principles we investigate qualities, forms of interaction and new methods and tools. User expe¬rience research, experience driven innovation as well as new modalities of interaction have evolved into prominent and re¬quired building blocks towards future innovative and successful technologies, applications and services. The Center for Techno¬logy Experience supports public and private customers with the newest scientific approaches and methods to develop them.

AIT is the project coordinator and acts as a central link between research, technology and business, overseeing the entire project progress.

Feelif d.o.o. is a high-tech company with a focus on information systems for the blind and visually impaired. Our goal is to empower the blind and visually impaired so that they can easily access information in digital form and become digitally sighted.

Feelif d.o.o. has roots in the well-established Slovenian company 4WEB d.o.o., which is developing web and mobile applications since the year 2000. Our patented technology used by Feelif is a product of our own research and innovation. We have invented a technology that enables the blind to feel shapes on a touch screen. Now we are using that technology to create various multisensory digital content (for museums and galleries, schools, public spaces, content for everyday use and games) for the blind and visually impaired. As the worldwide first provider of multisensory digital educational content and games for the blind and visually impaired we help to enrich their lives all over the world. With our disruptive technology, we are boldly discovering unknown fields, each day coming up with new solutions for the blind and visually impaired. In order to make use of that technology we have created 3 products:

Feelif device: a multimedia device for the blind and visually impaired;
Multisensory digital content: digital educational content, apps for everyday life and games;
Special program called a FeelBook Maker for sighted to create a multi-sensory inclusive and interactive digital content for the blind and visually impaired.

Feelif received many awards and recognitions for our innovative technology such as the Global Champion 2019 on World Summit Awards (WSA), the best European Social Innovation 2017 and UNESCO listed Feelif among the top 150 innovations that will change the world for the better.

The Fondazione Musei Senesi is the museum network of the territory of Siena. Since 2003 it has been committed to promoting awareness and enhancing the value of the territory, consolidating the museum system set up by the Province in the 1990s.

Today, the Fondazione Musei Senesi coordinates and unites over 40 museums, located in numerous “ordinary” villages dotting the Sienese countryside, involving about 30 Municipalities and other local Institutions.

The FMS network unites museums dedicated to various aspects of the material and intangible heritage of the territory of Siena: valuable archeological finds, exceptionally beautiful masterpieces of art, curious scientific and naturalistic collections, and captivating historical and ethnographic collections.

The Fondazione’s work is based on the concept of the “museo diffuso” – non-traditional museums that utilize a variety of spaces -, aiming to foster integration between collections and their original contexts, local communities, traditions and landscapes, research institutes, the business community, tourism and the creative industry in the territory. The museum system ideally brings together the different “souls” of Sienese territory under the umbrella of a shared identity: from the Elsa Valley to the Chianti, from the Crete chalk hills to the Merse Valley, from the Val d’Orcia and Monte Amiata to the Chiana Valley, and Siena, the area’s principal city.

The Austrian Association in Support of the Blind and Visually Impaired has been actively helping blind and visually impaired people in Austria for over 85 years.

As the oldest and, with more than 6,000 members, the largest self-help organization for the visually impaired, we represent the interests of around 318,000 blind and visually impaired people throughout Austria.

NOUSdigital Vienna creates multichannel digital experiences for museums, software innovation, mobile & web development, multimedia guides, streaming, localization and digital business processes.

NOUS is BeauCoup’s lead tech and business partner and cloud platform/CMS owner and will provide BeauCoup’s PWA-Solution.

Founded in 1498 as Catholic brotherhood, the SANTA CASA DA MISERICÓRDIA DE LISBOA is today a collective body for public service, in accordance with its own statutes, approved by the Portuguese Government in 2008.

Its main task is the promotion of welfare in the greater Lisbon area, providing, namely, healthcare and social care through the hospitals, healthcare centres, day-care centres, retirement homes, schools, and other social support structures that it manages. Throughout its history, the Santa Casa has also received a vast collection of national heritage, thanks to the benefactors that have entrusted it to the Institution. Amongst this heritage, the most important collection is on display at the Museum of São Roque, founded by the Santa Casa in 1905 to exhibit the sacred art collection of the Chapel of St John the Baptist, donated years prior by the Portuguese Crown.

Sign Time is an innovative company that enables communication between hearing and deaf people. We develop, use and combine groundbreaking sign language translation solutions for various media with a modern avatar.

Our portfolio also includes products for real-time translation of trouble and danger messages and a reading aid.

Founded in 2008, terzStiftung works as an interest representation for independent active living beyond pensioning age.

The foundation engages in silver economy related analyses, awareness raising, consultancy and campaigning with the objective to keep elderly people independent for longer, acknowledging and promoting the value of their competences and contributions.

The University of Siena participates in the BeauCoup project with the competencies and the facilities of the Department of Social Political and Cognitive Sciences and the Santa Chiara Fab Lab.

The Department brings together researchers on political and social science, interaction design and communication sciences, to study the social impact of technologies.

The Fab Lab, laboratory of digital fabrication, is a creative context for developing multidisciplinary projects for the design of human-centred solutions in several domains including education, cultural heritage and healthcare. The lab collaborates with cultural institutions, policy makers, non-profit associations and local communities for joint research projects, education activities and technology transfer.

The Fab Lab is part of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) and it is a node of the Fab Foundation’s international network that counts more than 1500 Fab Labs around the world.

VRVis is Austria’s leading institute for application-led research in visual computing and has received international acclaim for its work.

Together with the TU Vienna, the TU Graz and the University of Vienna, it forms one of the largest research clusters in Europe to focus on computer graphics and plays a prominent role in the research initiatives run by the government and the city of Vienna.

We make an active contribution to research and technology networks at both national and international level, using our expertise to directly promote the sharing of knowledge and experience between research and industry.