The CloudFest Hackathon 2025 was an exciting opportunity to challenge myself, collaborate with talented peers, and contribute to an impactful and innovative product. It pushed my limits, helped me connect with passionate professionals, and gave me the opportunity to explore new places. This was my first time at the CloudFest Hackathon, and I was full of curiosity. I had heard so many great things, and I wanted to experience it firsthand and see what it was really all about.
The trip to and from Rust, Germany
CloudFest Hackathon was held near Europa-Park, in Rust, Germany. The place is magical—but getting there without a personal car can be a real challenge. I found the FlixBus from the Frankfurt airport to Rust very helpful. The ride took about three and a half hours, and the only concern was making sure I didn’t miss the only one bus that ran each day.
The Cloudfest Hackathon was held at the beautiful Krønasår – The Museum Hotel, part of Europa-Park. The place offered an inspiring setting for creative energy and collaboration.
3 Days of Hackathon
I joined the Accessible Infographic project, led by Anne-Mieke Bovelett and Nina Jameson. The 3 days of the hackathon were intense, focused and competitive. The team was split into a few sub-teams: devs, documentation and marketing and I contributed to marketing and documentation team:
- I built the project website following the design created by Tobias;
- I updated the content with pages;
- I documented the process of team working with blog posts and social media posts.
Our 16-member team worked incredibly well together, focused on delivering the best possible value in a short amount of time. Everyone stepped in where they were needed and contributed with their skills to move project forward.
The most challenging part? Working in a noisy place filled with over 100 enthusiastic participants – exciting, but not exactly easy for a brain used to working from home.
What is Visua11y – Accessible Infographic?
Visua11y is a tool that enhances infographic accessibility, making the content inside images readable and understandable for everyone, including people using assistive technology.
How does it work?
- Once an infographic is uploaded in the block editor, it is processed by the Infographic API, which generates detailed information: comprehensive descriptions and structured data, such as tables, to better explain the infographic’s content.
- The output is displayed using a custom WordPress core block. The current MVP supports two types of infographics: pie charts and bar charts.
In short: Visua11y is like a magic wand that transforms a complex images into clean, accessible HTML markup.
Here is a demo of the MVP, as it was presented at the end of CloudFest Hackathon.
The Winner of 2 Awards
The project was very well received and won two awards at the end of the Hackathon:
- Overall Winner Award
- Breaking Barriers Award.
We didn’t expect to have such incredible recognition, but it gave us a strong boost of motivation to keep going and continue developing the tool with even more features.
My Takeaways
What I enjoyed most was working in a team and contributing to a new product that will certainly have a meaningful impact on the web. I pushed my limits—working in a noisy environment and finding quiet moments to focus and write content for the website. I also enjoyed documenting the creative process through images over the three days, even if social media isn’t my favorite task.
From the documentation shared by my teammates, I learned new things about how to approach accessible infographics—a topic I now want to explore and study further.
The experience aligned with my career path, connected me with other accessibility specialists, and deepened my commitment to creating a more inclusive web. A big thank you to the team leads for guiding us on this amazing journey!
