09/26/2026
Vision-Aid's Ability Bazaar Wins $50,000 in the Build with Gemini Global Hackathon XPRIZE!
Vision-Aid’s "Ability Bazaar: Talent with Disabilities, Apps Without Barriers" has been named a Runner-Up winner in the global Build with Gemini XPRIZE, receiving a $50,000 award! This is an extraordinary recognition for a Vision-Aid initiative that came together in just 3 short months.
A few highlights:
Award: Build with Gemini XPRIZE Runner-Up — $50,000
Global participation: More than 26,000 builders participated in the competition globally
Initial Projects shortlisted: 1,401
Top 100: Ability Bazaar advanced into the final Top 100 projects
The Challenge: Create a viable AI-first business which has the potential to scale and benefit more than 100,000.
Prize winners: Only 25 projects ultimately received cash awards, including just 15 Runner-Up awards
Category: Ability Bazaar competed in Entrepreneurship & Job Creation, one of the competition’s five categories
The $2 million Build with Gemini XPRIZE, presented by Google and XPRIZE and described by XPRIZE as "the world's largest hackathon", challenged teams around the world to do something much harder than build a prototype: create and launch a real AI-native business in just 90 days, attract real users, generate real revenue, and demonstrate a sustainable business model and meaningful real-world impact.
Projects were evaluated on three key dimensions: business viability, AI-native operations, and category impact. That is what makes this recognition especially meaningful to us. Ability Bazaar embodies a simple but powerful Vision-Aid idea: Talent with Disabilities. Apps without Barriers.
It combines Gemini-powered AI agents doing all the "front office work" with the skills and lived experience of people with disabilities to build accessible websites, apps and digital services. AI helps run and scale the marketplace, while experts and creators with disabilities provide the human judgment, development, accessibility expertise and quality assurance that make the work valuable. The goal is to use AI to expand opportunity, creating sustainable, paid digital work and livelihoods for people with disabilities while helping build a more accessible digital world.
To be selected as one of only 25 prize-winning projects from over 26,000 entries worldwide is a wonderful validation of that vision. And this truly took a village.
In a statement, the Vision-Aid team said : "Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who believed in Vision-Aid and Ability Bazaar, helped launch , build and test it, placed an order, sponsored training, shared ideas, opened doors, encouraged the team or simply placed your faith in what we were trying to create. This recognition belongs to the entire Vision-Aid family , and most importantly to the talented people with disabilities whose abilities, creativity and determination are at the heart of Ability Bazaar. Thank you for believing in the idea and helping bring it this far. The $50,000 award will help us build on this momentum, expand the platform, train more talent and create more opportunities for meaningful paid work."
Vision-Aid's Ability Bazaar is open for business. Anyone interested in any technology servides - whether it is building an app, or a web site, or back office technology services can order services easily and affordably through Ability Bazaar - Talent with disabilities. Apps without barriers. Every order goes towards enabling livelihoods for the visually impaired and persons with other disabilities.
Links:
Ability Bazaar : https://www.abilitybazaar.com/
X Prize announcement: https://gxp.moonshots.com/
