Al Jazeera Digital’s storytelling studio wins for an interactive web site highlighting the challenges of girls with disabilities in navigating megacities.
Al Jazeera’s immersive storytelling and media innovation studio, AJ Distinction, has gained a prestigious Gracie Award for the second consecutive yr.
Now of their forty seventh yr, the Washington, DC-based awards – hosted by the Alliance for Ladies in Media Basis (AWMF) – recognise excellence in work produced by, for and about girls.
Al Jazeera Digital’s all-woman AJ Distinction crew gained the coveted award on April 13 within the Web site ‐ Info/Leisure class for Inaccessible Cities, an interactive web site that brings audiences into the lived expertise of three girls with disabilities as they battle to navigate their lives in Mumbai, Lagos and New York.
Multiple billion folks – roughly 15 % of the worldwide inhabitants – expertise some type of incapacity. A lot of them stay in city areas.
The Inaccessible Cities web site launches with a easy query: “How would you get round a megacity when you couldn’t stroll, see indicators or hear automobiles passing by?”
The mission follows within the footsteps of AJ Distinction’s a number of award-winning digital and augmented actuality expertise, Nonetheless Right here, which explores the impact of imprisonment and gentrification on Black girls in america. And as with Nonetheless Right here, the intention of Inaccessible Cities is to generate consciousness on an necessary however usually uncared for problem, in line with Zahra Rasool, head of AJ Distinction.
“We wished to indicate how a scarcity of accessible public transport and infrastructure forestall folks with disabilities – particularly girls with disabilities – from absolutely and independently collaborating in society,” stated Rasool.
“It’s an awesome honour to be recognised by the Gracie’s,” she added. “Our intention is to proceed inspiring a brand new commonplace for digital information content material that’s absolutely inclusive of individuals with disabilities and to deliver consciousness to their challenges via collaboration with journalists with disabilities, native expertise and, most significantly, the unbelievable girls who’re the topic of this interactive expertise.”
The announcement marks the second consecutive yr that Al Jazeera Digital gained within the prestigious competitors, with Rasool and Malika Bilal – host of Al Jazeera Digital’s information and present affairs podcast, The Take – reeling in wins in 2021 for Finest On-line Producer and Finest Podcast Host, respectively.
Gracie Honorable Mentions had been additionally conferred upon Sandra Gathmann, the host of AJ Digital’s information and present affairs explainer sequence, Begin Right here, and to Stacey Samuel within the Podcast Producer class for The Take.
“We couldn’t be extra happy with AJ Distinction,” stated Carlos van Meek, Al Jazeera Digital’s director of innovation and programmes. “Whatever the myriad challenges raised through the pandemic, the small however pushed AJ Distinction crew has continued to innovate and place itself on the centre of necessary tales. We’re enormously happy with their accomplishments.”
This yr’s Gracie Awards might be sponsored by a bunch of business heavyweights, together with CNN, HBO, Premiere and Audacy and can happen on Might 24, on the Beverly Wilshire Resort in Los Angeles.
The whole checklist of Gracie winners may be discovered of their winner’s gallery.