Inclusive Technology to Boost Special Abilities

Technology is often talked about as a lever for productivity and a driver of economic development, but not so much about its key role in building fairer and more equitable societies. Inclusive digitisation enables all people, regardless of their status, to fulfil their potential and meet the challenges they face.

It is of particular importance for people with disabilities or different abilities, whose international day was celebrated on 3 December. ‘It is not about having the right to be equal, but about having the equal right to be different’, the Spanish Committee of Representatives of Persons with Disabilities (CERMI) claims. The fact is that we all have limitations; the important thing is to have the support that allows us to be as autonomous as possible.

Fortunately, steps are being taken in this direction and more and more people are thinking in terms of the necessary adaptations. Technology and innovation can be great allies, as facilitators and also as springboards, as they represent a real employment alternative for this group, although there is still a great deal of work to be done.

Inclusive by design

The problem is that the needs of people with disabilities are not usually considered from the outset, in the design phases of these products or services. In the best of cases, they have to be adapted a posteriori, and if the disability is intellectual disability (ID), the matter becomes even more complicated, as the cognitive accessibility of web environments and digital services must be enhanced so that anyone can understand them.

In this sense, A LA PAR Foundation, which works for the full participation of people with intellectual disabilities in society, stresses that cognitively accessible spaces are not only more egalitarian but also represent an opportunity to improve their use and attract a wider audience.

In recent times, European and Spanish regulations are speeding up their obligatory nature, but the key is still to understand that accessibility is not a one-off project but a continuous process that must form part of the web governance strategy.

According to data from the organisation Plena Inclusión Madrid, approximately 1% of the Spanish population has some kind of intellectual or developmental disability, which is equivalent to more than 268,000 people with officially recognised intellectual disabilities. This figure only includes people with a disability certificate of at least 33%, so it does not include those who might have an undiagnosed or not officially certified disability.

Approximately 1% of the Spanish population has some kind of intellectual or developmental disability, which is equivalent to more than 268,000 people with an officially recognised intellectual disability.

Moreover, people with intellectual disabilities are a very heterogeneous group – sharing an IQ below 70 – in which, in addition, other disabilities are more common.

ID is characterised by cognitive and adaptive behavioural limitations. These individuals may have, to varying degrees, problems in conceptual, social and practical areas – including reasoning, communication, task planning and organisation, problem solving, learning, interpersonal skills, self-care and others – which may require psychosocial and autonomy support for training, employment and leisure.

It is difficult to obtain data on the relationship between technology and intellectual disabilities in Spain, but some significant findings of recent reports include that 95% of people with intellectual disabilities believe that new technologies have improved their overall quality of life.

Reports also show that the development of technological tools is more complicated in the case of intellectual or cognitive disabilities because they require more complex and personalised approaches.

In addition, barriers to the use and management of technological tools are greater for this type of disability than for others. Although the sample is small, according to the Adecco Foundation’s Technology and Disability Report 2023, 58% of people with intellectual disabilities encounter obstacles when using technological tools, a figure that drops to 45% for the rest of the disabilities.

For 57% of those who responded in this way, these obstacles have to do with distrust: they are afraid of being deceived or victims of fraud when interacting with new technologies in an autonomous way.

On the other hand, 42% of those who responded that they find the use and management of new technologies very complex, and 15% indicated that they have financial difficulties in acquiring technological devices.

In the field of employment, this year’s Adecco Foundation study shows that three quarters of companies immersed in a digitalisation process are optimistic and believe that technology will have a positive impact on the inclusion of people with disabilities. However, of the 40.7% of companies that have implemented specific measures to facilitate this inclusion, only 13% have invested in technological tools for people with intellectual disabilities. As we pointed out, their development and implementation is more complicated than for sensory disabilities.

In this regard, a recent report by the VASS Foundation states that generative AI is transforming accessibility in the workplace, offering solutions adapted to various disabilities. Voice assistants and image recognition systems allow employees with disabilities to perform tasks faster and more efficiently, reducing the time spent by up to 30%.

But the reality is that, for the moment, there is a lack of technological and/or digital adaptations in the workplace that contribute to their integration and 7 out of 10 people with intellectual disabilities miss them to overcome the difficulties they encounter in the workplace (easy reading, alternative communication systems…).

However, although technological investment has unquestionable potential to break down the obstacles that hinder the employment of this type of person, as stated in the 13th edition of the ‘Technology and disability’ report by the Adecco Foundation, we must not forget that it is essential for technology to be accompanied by a deeper cultural and organisational change, which raises awareness and engages management committees so that jobs are not only generated but also sustainable over time.

The General Law on Disability (LGD) obliges companies with more than 50 employees to have 2% of workers with a disability through direct hiring or alternative measures, but according to the ‘Employability and Digital Talent Study 2024’ of the VASS Foundation, only 35.3% of people with disabilities of working age in Spain are part of the labour market. The lowest employment rate by type of disability is intellectual disability (23.8% in 2022) and, moreover, people with intellectual disabilities (among which the largest group is that of people with Down’s syndrome) are the ones with the lowest salaries.

75.6% of companies report difficulties in recruiting talent with disabilities and 88.6% consider that digital training would be a bridge for them to access vacancies in the organisation.

This, coupled with the digital transformation of recent years and the pace at which it is happening, makes the digitisation of this group an imperative for accessing job opportunities, as the willingness to hire increases as the level of digital skills is considered medium or high.

Disability and technological training

At the moment there is an under-representation of people with disabilities in the ‘ICT specialists’ group and their presence in technical positions is absolutely marginal, being, once again, the least frequent the intellectual one. More than 80% of this technical digital talent with disabilities is physical (40%), psychosocial (24.3%) and hearing (16.8%).

Therefore, in order to increase the employability of this group, in addition to a cultural and awareness-raising issue to break down existing taboos, it is necessary, on the one hand, to overcome a real digital divide because the cognitive accessibility of technology generally fails and, on the other, to improve access to specialised training in digital skills.

The report ‘Digital model of labour inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities: guides for professional success through ICTs’, by Fundación Telefónica and Fundación Prodis, goes into this in greater depth and establishes that the additional challenges for the technological training of people with intellectual disabilities require a series of actions to be implemented from different perspectives for the establishment and monitoring of their professional itinerary (labour mediation, responsibility of trainers from social entities; acquisition of general digital skills by workers with ID and support from HR teams within the company).

For example, teleworking requires not only digital skills, but also levels of autonomy, self-management and regulation that can be difficult to achieve for people in this situation.

Fortunately, there are more and more initiatives such as that of the A LA PAR Foundation with the Tandem project ‘Sustainable Digital Solutions’, subsidised with European Next Generation funds and the support of the SEPE, which combines training and employment so that young people with intellectual disabilities are trained in techniques for digitising document collections and updating databases, multiplying their chances of finding employment in a sector with a high demand for workers.

Also, among others, a specific project for women with intellectual disabilities, especially in rural areas, which offers training in basic and advanced digital skills from the Federation of Organisations of People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities of Madrid, through Plena Inclusión Madrid.

A different but essential talent

Beyond the right to participation or the idea of a fair society, the number of people of working age with recognised disabilities has grown in recent years and represents an ‘undeniable source of talent’, according to the VASS Foundation, which considers public-private collaboration to be crucial in this regard.

Law 3/2023, of 28 February, on Employment, includes several measures and provisions such as the willingness to commit the Spanish Employment Agency and the regional public employment services to consider people with disabilities for technical profiles.

For its part, the Spanish Strategy on Disability 2022-2030 speaks of new ‘opportunities in the digital economy’ and ‘challenges in terms of accessibility’; of the need to promote ‘innovation in […] technological development and digitalisation in areas that affect disability’ or of the essential ‘promotion of the acquisition of digital skills by people with disabilities or, failing that, the necessary support for access to digital services and means of communication’.

‘Leave no one behind’ is the slogan and highlights an inclusive cultural trend, but the reality, as reflected in the statistics, is that there is still a long way to go before the necessary structural transformation takes place.

In order for this group to be able to conquer new work spaces and demonstrate that they contribute value based on their abilities, skills and attitudes, social change is also needed.

Initiatives such as the book ‘Nada Nos Para’ – La visión de los que nunca se rinden – by the A LA PAR Foundation with the collaboration of Javier Fesser, which tells the story of the self-improvement, strength and enthusiasm of fourteen people with intellectual disabilities, who study, work and overcome all the obstacles they encounter along the way, contribute to this. ‘The world of intellectual disability is inhabited by brave people, it is the best example of resilience’, says the author.

Purposeful technologies that are already a reality

The truth is that although we have already seen that the road ahead is still long and, worst of all, steep, fortunately people with some kind of intellectual disability are beginning to see technology as a travelling companion that helps them in their day-to-day lives.

This is precisely the objective set by PLACEAT Plena Inclusión, the Placentina Association for People with Intellectual Disabilities, which did not hesitate to discover the benefits that Generative Artificial Intelligence could bring to this group.

Pioneers in the application of AI, PLACEAT themselves decided to develop several virtual assistants with this technology to help their users, such as, for example, the easy reading assistant, one of the first to be developed in response to a need: to adapt texts to the reading and writing abilities of people with ID.

Thus, by simply ‘pasting’ a text, the assistant adapts and validates it. ‘The tool communicates with Chat GPT, it is a very simple interface that has been improved with the contributions and experience of the people we work with’, explains Ramón Rubio Lucio, managing director of PLACEAT.

The text that the assistant offers as a result also complies with the UNE standard for easy reading, which ‘helps professionals who work in this field, saving them time. But we never seek to replace anyone with this assistant, in fact the process is not complete without the participation of the people who have to understand these texts once they have been translated into easy-to-read language. In other words, there are many more layers, in addition to the one we have developed, to complete the process and do it correctly,’ he says.

Intelligent virtual assistants

Perhaps it was the success achieved with this first assistant that PLACEAT decided to make AI a more than valuable tool and today they already have no less than ten virtual assistants, including one that helps them create interactive stories on the topic of their choice, improving reading comprehension and decision-making; the assistant for creating plays; the professional writing assistant that allows them to turn simple texts into ‘authentic’ literary works; PlaciGirl, the assistant for the Dynamisation of Women’s Groups, capable of proposing topics of interest to talk about; or Plácida, a PLASER Job Support Assistant, one of the NGO’s services, who by simply indicating the knowledge they have in terms of training and jobs they have done, automatically generates a Curriculum Vitae and a cover letter to send to any company.

‘We have always been convinced that technology can help us to provide individual, very person-centred support to develop skills. That has been one of the objectives of the Association for more than 50 years, to provide people with intellectual disabilities with tools or solutions that make their lives easier, and AI helps us in this task. In fact, our approach in all these assistants has been to work alongside them, the users, in their development, responding to their needs, how they can best use the tool, etc.’, adds Ramón Rubio, who points out how Generative Artificial Intelligence allows them to access innovation and also free of charge and “it is completely adaptable to any level of difficulty, language comprehension, etc. and for this very reason it is constantly improving”.

‘These assistants help us, entertain us and are very easy to use’, says Rudi Calle, a PLACEAT user with a disability.

Together with the assistants, the association presented these days two extensions for the Google Chrome browser with which it is possible to ‘listen’ in audio to the contents of the web pages as well as to translate these texts into pictograms, especially useful for groups such as people with autism.

What is clear is that in PLACEAT technology is part of their daily life, trying to reduce with it the digital gap that accompanies people who suffer some kind of intellectual disability.

‘The assistants are also available on networks such as WhatsApp or Telegram’, says Luis Miguel García, the association’s Communication Director, who also gives a very graphic description of how they understand AI. ‘For us it is a ‘multi-application’ as it allows a ‘multiplication’ of its functionalities; in other words, the same assistant can be used for many things, from understanding an invoice or being able to read and understand a sentence to developing creativity or a critical spirit or writing a CV’.

‘Alexa, open my memory’

Last year alone,  there were more than 7,000 million interactions with Alexa in Spain, a ‘digital companion’ that Amazon has turned into the assistant that helps us to choose and play the music we want, make phone calls to our contacts, regulate the temperature in the house, make the shopping list and for many people is a great ally in something really important: slowing the mild-moderate cognitive impairment of people with dementia or who have suffered a cerebrovascular disease.

All this thanks to one of the so-called ‘skills’ developed for Alexa and made possible by the Spanish Alzheimer’s Confederation (CEAFA) together with Amazon Alexa.

The Alexa Memory skill aims to slow down the mild to moderate cognitive deterioration of people with dementia or who have suffered a cerebrovascular disease.

Thus, it is only necessary to say to the device the almost magical words ‘Alexa, inaugurate my memory’ and, through a voice system and with the help of Artificial Intelligence, the application will begin to ask the user questions to stimulate cognitive functions that affect areas of the brain such as language, memory or calculation, among others.

Also with the aim of breaking down some of the barriers that mark the daily lives of people with ID, Alexa has another skill, the 21, in clear allusion to the chromosome that people with Down’s syndrome have triplicated in the 21st pair.

With this tool and through different stories that Alexa narrates, people with Down syndrome receive advice on the importance of physical activity, spending time with friends and maintaining healthy routines, while participating in a tool that boosts their cognitive development and entertainment.

‘The Alexa team is working every day to make technology more accessible to everyone. Voice control makes any interaction more natural and reduces the digital divide’, explains Andrés Pazos, Country Manager of Alexa in Spain, who also stated at a Plena Inclusión forum that ’developing inclusive technology benefits all people. And especially those with disabilities because they live in a world that has not been made with them in mind’.

Play to learn

Another technology giant, Microsoft, knows the value that technology can have in helping people with ID face challenges such as training, with systems and materials that are not adapted to their needs. Changing this reality is the goal of Minecraft Education, a platform that inspires creative and inclusive learning through play and which is already being used by the Gil Gayarre Foundation to improve the training and digital skills of special education students.

Thus, playing with Minecraft Education promotes digital skills, creativity and critical, creative and computational thinking from an early age. In addition, according to the Foundation, with this system students also develop better skills in terms of collaboration and solving real problems.

‘We must be committed to talent and to a more inclusive and open education. Minecraft is our educational video game platform that combines two parts that are very important in learning: the motivation of being able to play in a safe and controlled environment, which gives us access to many pedagogical applications and capabilities. And, on the other hand, like other Microsoft technologies, it is designed from the ground up with accessibility principles. With the Gil Gayarre Foundation, for example, we are managing to create a project that has a real social impact’, says Fran García Calvo, Director of Education and Employability at Microsoft Spain.

Inclusion in the metaverse

The ‘non-real’ world can also represent an opportunity for technology to bring value to the DI community, in this case, specifically the parallel world of the metaverse. A scenario chosen by Nokia and baptised as ‘INCLUVERSO 5G’, an innovative project that fuses traditional therapy with virtual reality, with the aim of providing an immersive experience so that people with intellectual disabilities can face and overcome their fears.

The project arose when the Centre for Opportunities, Training and Work Insertion (COFOIL) of the Juan XXIII Foundation detected that some people in this group are afraid of going up or down stairs, a common element in most environments: public transport, shopping centres, homes, health centres, etc. This fear undoubtedly limits their mobility and independence, considerably affecting their quality of life and reducing their ability to participate in everyday activities.

It is precisely to support these people that ‘INCLUVERSO 5G’ was created, a space that combines therapy with new technologies and in this way is able to combat the difficulties faced by people with intellectual disabilities in their capacity for imagination and abstract reasoning.

With virtual reality as a technological base, through this it is possible to create a controlled and safe simulated environment that facilitates the gradual exposure of people with intellectual disabilities to those situations that cause them anxiety. In short, a completely inclusive and therapeutic Metaverse.

‘Developing and validating our technology with users with disabilities helps us identify the challenges that future communications networks will need to solve to make immersive communications available to all,’ says Pablo Perez, researcher at Nokia’s XR Lab.

Personal experience led to Decedario, the language stimulation game that Diana de Arias developed after suffering a stroke at the age of 23. For her own recovery, she developed the Decedario method with thousands of cognitive games and the results were so positive that she wanted to share it with anyone who needed it.

So today Decedario is a cognitive stimulation material for all ages with more than 500 pieces and millions of exercises to stimulate language, memory, attention and executive functions and even academic reading and writing skills.

Also available online, this cognitive gym is already used by a total of 140,000 people in Spain and Latin America.

The so-called social robots are also an important ally in the goal of improving the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and even a formula for improving or accelerating their recovery.

Social robots are an important ally in improving the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, improving their recovery or speeding up their recovery.

This is the case of Pepper, a robot that helps people with autism spectrum disorders to recognise gestures and emotions. Developed as a result of joint research by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) and the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Pepper is able to understand the emotional state of a child or adult with ASD.

The key is, as UPCT professor José Manuel Ferrández Vicente explains, that ‘children wear a bracelet that detects the level of sweating and cardiac variability, to know the changes that occur in the level of stress and these data are integrated with the gestures of the face, to detect an emotion, in a closed-loop therapy’. In this way, Pepper knows how to behave at any given moment, depending on the child’s emotional state.

As we can see, these are real examples in which technology can and must help to make the impossible possible, allowing disability to be transformed into a capacity for inclusion and equality.

This is not only a technological challenge, but also a cultural and social challenge to create a world that truly belongs to everyone and for everyone.