Access for All – 30 Years of the World Wide Web

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the World Wide Web – invented by Tim Berners Lee in who wrote in his proposal that ‘the aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards’. To celebrate this milestone, we’re taking a look at two of our award winners who have made full use of the World Wide Web.

The Tech4Good Awards celebrate inspiring examples of the way the web helps people achieve their goals, enabling people to connect to others, find the information they need and access services and resources they may not have been able to otherwise.

“There are very few innovations that have truly changed everything. The Web is the most impactful innovation of our time.”
Jeff Jaffe, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium.

The Big Give: Digital Giving Award Winner, 2013

The Big Give is a not-for-profit website that helps charities to use the internet to fundraise in innovative ways. They profile the work of thousands of organisations and their projects and are responsible for the UK’s biggest online match funding campaign – the Christmas Challenge.

In December 2013, the year they won a Tech4Good Award, the Challenge raised over £11 million online for 387 charities. Since being set up in 2007 it has raised an amazing £112m for UK charities.

what3words: BT Ingenious Award Winner 2015

In a world where 75% of the population suffer from inadequate addressing systems, an accurate address may mean the difference between receiving vital aid and deliveries, reporting disease and exercising human rights.

what3words is a free mobile app and online map that provides a precise and incredibly simple way for people to communicate where they live by dividing the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigning each one a unique three word address.

This makes it significantly more memorable than the equivalent alphanumeric characters or coordinates required to define the same location. It’s also much easier to say, and therefore more accessible to all.

What next for the web?

The 2019 Tech4Good Awards open for nominations on 27 March and we are looking forward to seeing what new new ways have been found to use the World Wide Web for good this year.

‘This is for everyone.’ tweeted Berners-Lee during his participation in the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony. How right he was.