Eugene Company Receives Prestigious Telly Awards

The Tech-Aid Institute is honored with Three Telly Awards for its unprecedented development of interactive CD-ROMS for people with intellectual disabilities.

Eugene, OR -- (July 7, 2009) The Tech Aid Institute of Eugene has been honored with three Bronze Telly Awards, www.tellyawards.com, for their project Live Smart Live Safe: Preventing Respiratory Illness. Tech Aid, which is the first company in the nation to create interactive CD-ROMs for people with intellectual disabilities, received the Bronze Telly Awards in the categories of Health and Wellness, Multimedia and Use of Graphics.

The Founder and President of Tech Aid, Dr. Jennifer Wells, said “We’re excited about the honor. We have worked hard to promote and develop the use of computer-based learning tools for people with intellectual disabilities (ID). We have had wonderful feedback on how this software program is helping educate this special population about how to protect themselves from germs and other viral epidemics like the recent swine flu.”

Dr. Wells says she saw the need to develop this type of software after years of working with people with intellectual disabilities, autism, and severe chronic mental illness. After receiving her PhD from the University of Oregon in 1994, Dr. Wells started working in the research realm and developing software for people with intellectual disabilities. She then established Tech Aid in 2002. Since that time, Tech-Aid has received grant funding to do work in the areas of preventing sexual misconduct and opportunistic sex offending; substance abuse and crime prevention; HIV/AIDS prevention; and emergency preparedness.

The Telly Awards, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, is the premier award that honors the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, and corporate video departments in the world. Organizers say this year has been one of the most competitive and successful with nearly 11,000 entries from all 50 states and around the world.