On April 2nd, World Autism Awareness Day, Impact BBDO collaborated with Etisalat to launch Etisalat Wider Web in order to grant better access to the web for Autistic people. The project consists of a browser extension that users can activate to navigate the web in an autistic friendly way. It aims to achieve a global redesign of the web experience and represents a world first product of this kind. The extension allows users to reorganise information, change colour modes and fonts on web pages. In addition, advertising is blocked as well as video autoplay and irrelevant background images.

Autism is a neurodivergence that 1% of the population is diagnosed with every year. Academic research also shows that the web is the preferred media by autistic people to interact with the world; due to its predictability and consistency. Although currently most websites are cluttered with information and not suited for Autistic people. The browser extension represents a project of collaborative design as it was developed with the help of local psychologists and widely tested within the Autistic population.

The project was launched with an integrated campaign consisting of a teaser phase to raise awareness on Autism, including an emotional video that shows the impact the neurodivergence has on the daily lives of individuals and families. 

Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Edge have published the extension making it virtually available to everyone in the world.

Here you can find the Etisalat landing page for the project, from which you can download the extension and get to know more about the project.