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Mission & Objectives

The VODIS project tries to provide to the existing systems of e-democracy, developed by Indra S.A. (Voting system and surveys by Internet), whenever it is necessary and possible, additional facilities, like especial/modified interfaces or other equivalent resources, to assure the accessibility for all the society, being allowed the total access to these systems to all the people, independently of if they have any disability or not.

Innovation

The increasing diffusion of the new technologies in the daily life, labor as well as cultural or leisure, also the expectations of the generalization of the Information Society which raise a new border: to link the permanent innovation with the integration of all the people in social and productive life.

From this point of view it can arise new businesses and opportunities, that derive from the advantages of the design of applications, services and terminals for everybody. The innovation and integration in the beginning of century, may determine, thanks to a fruitful interrelation, the generalized diffusion of the applications and technological new features for all, or on the other side, that such technical advances can be a new barrier to increase the exclusion.

The innovation and its increasing importance in the advanced societies, show the perspectives that are opened with its application, to obtain better levels of welfare and competitiveness, and new opportunities for a greater cohesion and integration, that can be facilitated by the development of the interactivity and the dialogue without borders of space nor of time, that allows that the participation of any person will be opened to new horizons, but mainly, makes possible to listen to and to integrate the expectations and proposals of all those that they want to make hear his voice at the time of devising collective projects.

All it allows to emphasize the importance that the new technological systems are going to have to obtain that the Information Society will be the society of the inclusion and the participation, where the disabled people will not be excluded nor marginalized, and more when this Interactive Society is going to be a society where the knowledge is a determining factor more than the technological capacities. A factor, on the other hand, that is only in the people and their decision to let grow from day to day the collective intelligence, that will only reach all its potentiality in the measurement that it will be put to the service of solidarity and the welfare of each community.

If it is wished that the Information of the Information will be the society for the social cohesion and not a new way for the exclusion and the citizen duality, it is essential to obtain the commitment from the public authorities, economic and social agents, and all the society, to develop legislative measures and technical, enterprise and social projects that they will facilitate that the disabled people will be beneficiaries by the design for all and the expedite technologies, so that the technical advances and the new applications and information technologies services and the communications will be a source of opportunities for the integration, the learning and the employment and not a set of new barriers that will increase the exclusion and discrimination.

To obtain it, it is necessary to harness and to develop policies and initiatives that will contribute to foment the learning and the knowledge in New Technologies and Systems of the Information Society for the people with disabilities, and it is necessary to impel those projects, programs and initiatives of innovation that will intensify the "design for everybody", that will facilitate the generalized application of qualifying technologies and those other solutions that will facilitate the accessibility to the developments of the new realities.

The VODIS project belongs to this type of initiatives.

From the technical point of view, the project is based on three premises:

  • The use of the last technological new features. So that the products will be:
    • Accessible
    • Easy to use
    • Reliable y robust
  • Treatment of groups of disabled people from an innovating perspective. A disability is not only who suffers a physical or cognitive disability, disabled is everybody that having right to exercise a function like the citizen participation, hasnīt means to access and to accomplish it. The more appropiate way to obtain this is, from the perspective of the VODIS project, an electronic interface thought and developed from these two values:
    • Design for everybody
    • Elimination of barriers.
  • Technical Tools
    Use tools to validate the accessibility
    • Validate the syntax of the pages and the stile sheets through the W3C validators, W3C MarkUp Validation Service and W3C CSS Validation Service
    • Validation of the syntax through T.A.W.
    To show the pages in a simulator or "only-text" browsers
    • without mouse.
    • unloaded graphics.
    • unloaded sounds.
    • unloaded scripts, stile sheets and applets.
    To show the pages in different browsers
    • Mozilla Firefox
    • IE
    • Opera
    • etc..
    To review the pages with a screen reader:
    • JAWS for Windows (Freedom Scientific).
    • JAWS for Windows (demo version in Spanish).

Potential Target

VODIS is focused to an ample phantom of potential clients, that consists of all the public and private bodies that promote elections and all the organizations who make decisions with the citizens and clients participation:

A segmented list of potential clients is:

  • National Governments, ministries
  • Local and Regional or Governments
  • Sanitary Institutions
  • Chambers of Commerce
  • Sport Clubs
  • Schools and Universities (rectorate and delegated of students)
  • Public Offices and agencies
  • Multi-utility Companies
  • Syndicates
  • Social Mass media (TVīs, newspapers, etc)
  • Companies
  • Institutions of political and social research
  • etc...

The obtained services as result of the VODIS project are focused to the public institutions of all Europe.

Expected Benefits

From the point of view of the public and private bodies that promote elections, VODIS supposes to really obtain the objective of "Internet for everybody", in a significant functional framework as it is the participation of the citizens in the political life of the community.

From the point of view of the organizations interested in the citizen participation and that promote electoral processes, VODIS represents an innovative tool to obtain the citizen participation who are not ready to give it directly.

From the point of view of the citizens, this newly tool helps some of them in their electoral choice. The citizens may answer the questionnaire or to vote at different moments.

The project Dates

The project has been submitted to EUREKA in October 2005 and is being developed in two phases:

Definition Phase:
from September 2005 until December 2005 (3 months).The project got the Eureka Label in October 2005 (E 3618!)
Development Phase:
from January 2006 until December 2007 (24 months).