Fresh off the back of a big win in a regional innovation award, digital concierge company Cerge is looking to expand its push for inclusion to new businesses and events.
The company was one of two champions in the City of Moreton Bay’s recent Innovation Challenge Showcase.
The winners received $100,000 each and a six-month pilot partnership with the City of Moreton Bay.
Co-founder Chris Kerrisk said the team was stoked to take home the win.
“It reinforces that our platforms has best impact with local government, state governments and large enterprise. It’s certainly very helpful,” he said.
It’s not the first award for Cerge, which was founded in 2019 based on the lived experience of co-founder Victoria Kerrisk.
Since that time, Cerge has won regional, national and even international awards, including being named Global Champion Inclusion and Empowerment at the World Summit Awards.
It has expanded beyond Australia’s borders to Singapore, Dubai and India.
And Kerrisk said the team has its sights set on the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032, with an internal goal to make the games “the most inclusive and accessible in history through the use of advanced technology”.
What is Cerge?
Cerge promotes inclusive access through its companion app and website offerings which together create more inclusive environments and help people with disability make informed decisions about where they go and what events and activities they take part in.
“What we’re solving for is that one of the biggest barriers for participation [for people with disability] is a requirement for public information,” Kerrisk said.
This includes information about how accessible a venue is. Based on Victoria’s lived experience, the pair knew how much research people with disability put into leaving the house to go anywhere.
“People will study for hours and research trying to find whether the venue does or doesn’t work,” he said.
Cerge brings various accessibility tools – like audio guides, sensory guides and virtual tours – together to make it easier to do that research. Those tools were co-designed with people with lived experience.
Kerrisk said local governments had helped the company reach a broader range of amenities like local sporting clubs and tourism venues.
A ‘bold’ future
The win in Moreton Bay will allow Cerge to partner with the local council and implement its programs across 25 venues. It will set up each venue with virtual tours and visual stories, embedding Cerge into their websites for maximum social impact.
“It’s really about the outcomes for the community. On average, each venue with our solutions and tools that we build and develop has between 30 to 50,000 engagements every single year… that’s a person who immerses themselves in the virtual tour, listens to the audio guide or studies the sensory or visual story,” he said.
“That is someone proactively studying to make a decision to participate in the real world, and it’s increasing their confidence and likelihood that they’ll participate.
“The engagements just go to show how vitally valuable it is for that community… making that informed decision from the comfort of your own home.”
In seven years, they hope to have rolled out their technology to all tourism operators and venues ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic games.
Kerrisk admits it’s a big vision but said Cerge has to “be bold”.
“We’re well and truly on the trajectory to achieve that,” he said.