The first round of judging for Open AIR has come to an end, and the winners were announced on Friday at a  party at Cover 3 in North Austin. Six winners were announced in two categories, Basic and Advanced, based on the nonprofit's requirements for the site and the number of advanced features (like video, audio, or ARIA widgets) that were attempted.

We had so many fantastic sites submitted that it was incredibly difficult to narrow the results down to just six. These six sites will be allowed to make updates to their sites and resubmit for another round of judging, and the final winners will be announced at the Dewey Winburne Awards and Open AIR Awards Ceremony on March 11, 2013, at SXSW.

AIR sites are judged by a panel of accessibility experts, including Jim Thatcher, Preety Kumar (CEO at Deque), and Knowbility's own Geri Druckman. Thanks to the judges for all their hard work and to Deque for sharing use of their excellent WorldSpace tool with us!

Without any further ado, here are the Round One winners and their non-profit organizations!

Basic Category

  1. Headspring Hurwitzes: Texas ROSE
  2. Team Canada: Black Creek Community Health Centre
  3. Team Web-able: Council on At-Risk Youth

Advanced Category

  1. Basic Semantics: The Virginia Home
  2. The Green Team: ASPIRE
  3. EZXS_ibility: HaShem's House

Stay tuned for more news on the Open AIR winners!