Newsletter October 2024

iDEM: Innovative and Inclusive Democratic Spaces for Deliberation and Participation

Welcome to our newsletter

We're a Horizon Europe project developing AI tools to make information more accessible for everyone. iDEM language tools aim to support people with disabilities, older people and migrants in democratic processes by addressing the language barriers which present an obstacle to their participation.

iDEM started in January 2024 and in these first 10 months we have been actively developing and sharing our project. Find all our updates in this newsletter!

What have we been up to?

Our partners have been talking about iDEM, a lot! The project has been in the spotlight during round tables, conferences, congresses and governmental events.

To promote clear communication in public administration, UPF introduced iDEM in the Conference of the Journal of Language and Law 2024 on September 27th in Barcelona.

Members of our consortium from UPF also participated in the European Researchers’ Night on September 27th in Barcelona. They introduced iDEM’s language simplification App.

Our partners from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Plena Inclusión Madrid and Fundación Cibervoluntarios discussed the iDEM accessibility tool at the II International Congress for Clear Communication on October 17th in Madrid.

On October 23rd, our collegue and postdoctoral researcher at iDEM, Cristina Astier Murillo from UPF, talked about iDEM during the Public Policy Center’s Policy Dialogues: "Artificial Intelligence: Ethics, Policies, and Social Change".

On October 24th, Professor Horacio Saggion from UPF travelled to Brussels to talk about iDEM at the NEM Summit 2024 – “Emerging virtual worlds for a new digital society”.

Workshop on Pilot Design and Technology Update

During the 16th and 17th of October, our consortium met at Universitat Pompeu Fabra to discuss iDEM’s next steps. Progress on the development of an initial version of the text simplification and democratic accessibility App based on natural language processing and AI was discussed. There was also a lot of focus on how the lessons we learned during our focus groups with older people, people with disabilities and migrants are going to be integrated into the project’s use cases.

Expert Perspectives: iDEM Interviews

We interviewed Julia Wadoux to explore the barriers older people encounter in digital public spaces and identify ways to overcome them.

Julius Ntobuah illustrated his organisation’s initiatives to break social isolation for refugees and asylum seekers in Sweden, including IT training and global advocacy.

During our interview with Kamil Goungor we learned about the continued challenges faced by people with disabilities regarding democratic participation, the role technology plays in political accessibility, and recent encouraging progress.

Read our articles and listen to the interviews here

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This document is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under the Grant Agreement No. 101132431. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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This website is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under the Grant Agreement No. 101132431 . Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.