The prestigious annual Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Alliance (APICTA) Awards are a magnet for the region's top information technology (IT) talents. Organised by 16 member economies, including Hong Kong, each year's event recognises the developments and applications that have done most to enhance IT awareness across different sectors in the Asia-Pacific region.

Among the Hong Kong entrants, four of them had won prominent awards:

• The Airport Authority Hong Kong (HKAA) for its Integrated RFID Baggage Reconciliation and Management System;
• The Hong Kong Society for the Blind for its Tele-digital Library for the Visually Impaired;
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong for its Innovative Multi-Touch Surface, and
• Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Chang Ming Thien College for its Intelligent Bus Stop.

Baggage Reconciliation System enhances efficiency

Lee Fung King, Manager of HKAA's Passenger Transport System, said their ground-breaking RFID Baggage Reconciliation and Management system was the brain child of several years' research and development. "The conceptual design came into being in 2003 which took shape the following year and the system was formally implemented in 2008. "We used to rely on the bar code system for baggage reconciliation in the past but the efficiency has always depended on print quality of the bar codes used. Such a system also posed extra difficulties to our staff in reconciling the bar codes on the baggage when they were blocked," said Lee. "In designing the new RFID system, we wanted to significantly enhance the overall accuracy and efficiency," she added.

Successfully launched last year, the new Integrated RFID Baggage Reconciliation and Management System now handles all baggage at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). The new system's RFID chips eliminate both the problem of poorly printed bar codes and the need for manual scanning of printed bar codes by enabling all information on every piece of baggage to be identified via transmission of signals. "Our advanced signal identification system will not only reduce effort but alsoenhance our work efficiency. Yet, only some of the baggage information can be identified for the time being, and thus HKAA has been striving to improve the data storage technology. HKAA aims at enabling effective reading of more detailed information throughout the baggage reconciliation process so as to minimize the possibility of baggage reconciliation errors.

Lee and her colleagues hope that HKAA's winning of the coveted APICTA Grand Award prize will further energize staff and enhance the world's awareness of the merits of this new system, and greater progress in the aviation industry can be achieved.

Eliminating reading barriers for the sake of the visually impaired

The world's heavy reliance on printed materials means visually impaired people have always struggled to obtain information. Chan Lai Yee, Manager of the Information Accessibility Centre of the Hong Kong Society for the Blind and her team are keen to change all that forever. To prevent the marginalisation of visually impaired in Hong Kong, the Society has now established an Information Accessibility Centre delivering easier access to all kinds of information and communications to help build a digitally-inclusive society.

Easily available via phone or internet-enabled PC, The Centre's award-winning Tele-digital Library for the Visually Impaired is Hong Kong's first-ever facility of its kind which provides access to the contents of the tele-library. Chan remarked that the Centre had been working with KanHan Technologies Limited to develop the new Tele-library since 2003. Following years of hard work, the two partners finally launched a user-friendly, multi-functional gateway to many digitized talking books. "While we encountered many difficulties during development, our many visually impaired members played a vital role in helping us to perfect the system and win this award. Therefore, all our staff were overwhelmed with joy upon our winning the award."

Assistant Trainer at the Centre, Yuen Ho Fun, added that the library now contains over 2,000 talking books. Each title's contents can be heard over the web via an innovative text-to-speech engine which requires no computer skills to use. The Tele-library's many other user-friendly functions include instant catalogue checking and listening to digitized reading materials as well as community news and other updated information via multiple internet links to different contents to maximize conveniences for those visually impaired. All these mean to enable the underprivileged to have access to various information of the community and be digitally included, turning Hong Kong into a genuine inclusive information society.

Innovative Multi-touch Surface for the enhancement of interactivity

In creating his groundbreaking Innovative Multi-touch Surface, Jordan Cheng Man Fai of the Chinese University of Hong Kong was inspired by the Stephen Speilberg movie, Minority Report. "Movies help stimulate creative ideas" said Cheng. "I was so intrigued by seeing Tom Cruise control the computer screen with his gloves. I simply had to see if I could translate the idea into a reality".

As the idea is pretty innovative, Cheng had no real reference for developing his new concept. As a result, he had to spend a great deal of time conducting innumerable trials and tests to develop such an innovative technology. "Until recently, carrying out instructions on a screen interface was limited to a single touch. My new Multi-touch Surface enables an almost limitless number of touches to be used at the same time. As this means that several jobs can now be carried out via just one interface, work efficiency is greatly enhanced," he added.

Cheng emphasised that the new technology helps boost human interactivity on such occasions as large-scale expositions and seminars since one single interface alone can facilitate multiple users at the same time where greater diversity of information can also be displayed. He hope that the new technology will be of great benefit for both the education and social enterprises sectors. "Apart from commercial uses, my invention is also ideal for benefiting users of facilities like libraries," he said.

Still delighted following his receipt of the APICTA award, it came as a surprise that Cheng was invited to collaborate on further developing his invention with a university professor from Malaysia. Cheng is looking forward to the challenge and is determined to keep entering subsequent international contests to ensure still more people can benefit from his innovative thinking.

Intelligent Bus Stop makes it easier for the visually impaired to travel across town

Leung Yun Yee, a fifth-former studying at Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Chang Ming Thien College, created the Intelligent Bus Stop for entering the contest under the guidance of her teachers. She was very surprised to receive the award. "What I had in mind at first was to just to take part in the event and had never dreamed of becoming an award-winner. I'm really grateful towards the organising body and feel greatly indebted to all my teachers and school-mates who helped me to turn my idea into reality," Leung remarked. "This is indeed a most precious experience to me."

She decided to create the Intelligent Bus Stop after seeing how easy it was for busy bus drivers to overlook visually impaired passengers waiting at bus-stops holding cardboards with bus route numbers who were unable to board the expected buses shortly. "Actually, I perfected an SMS type service that enables visually impaired people to simply key in their route numbers at bus-stops. When the right bus arrives, the bus-stop simply emits an audible signal alerting passengers to get on board", she said.

Challenges Leung had faced during the creation of her project included the writing and application of several complicated computer programmes. Pleasingly, these problems were resolved, thanks to the kind support of her teachers. Said Leung upon receiving the award: "I hope that my design will be applied to daily traffic network all over Hong Kong as I am confident that visually impaired people will benefit while traffic flow will be greatly speeded up."