The legitimacy of deliberative and participatory processes is questionable due to the exclusion and marginalisation of different communities. idem aims to eliminate Barriers in deliberative and participatory democratic spaces formarginalized and vulnerable communities. These barriers often result from limited skills in reading, writing or understanding an often complex language necessary for deliberative and participatory processes.
Our vision in this project is to improve this situation with the help of models and tools of artificial intelligence and the processing of natural language. The aim is to improve the accessibility of democratic spaces and the participation in deliberative processes for marginalised groups. In the project, nexus is responsible for researching the barriers to the inclusion of citizens with cognitive disabilities, migrants and elderly people and leads the work package on the user:in-centred design and piloting of the three use cases.
idem will help develop the next generation of multilingual models aimed at (1) identifying possible causes of problems in understanding multiple European languages and different target groups, (2) automatically adapt texts in these languages to become understandable for these audiences to provide (3) AI tools for simplified easily readable messages. To this end, iDEM will also build on the results of relevant previous projects and seek cooperation with related projects and relevant centres for democracy in Europe.
The project is being carried out by a consortium of eleven European partner organisations from six European countries.
Duration: 01/2024 – 12/2026
Team: Dr. Thomas Blanchet (Project manager), Volkan Sayman (Deputy project management), Dr. Carina Brumme, Owen Wooden
Project partner: Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Spanien), CFS Consulting Franchise & Sales GmbH (Österreich), Organización de Entidades en Favor de las Personas con Discapacidad Intelectual de la Comunidad de Madrid (Spanien), The National Microelectronics Applications Centre LTD (Irland), Associazione Nazionale di Famiglie e Persone con Disbilità Intellettive e Disturbi del Neurosviluppo (Italien), Fundación Cibervoluntarios (Spanien), Actionaid International Italia ETS (Italien), Institut Municipal de Personas AMB Discapacitat (Spanien), Barcelona Ombudsman’s Office (Spanien), University of Leeds (Vereinigtes Königreich), nexus Institut für Kooperationsmanagement und interdisziplinäre Forschung (Deutschland)
Supporting provider: Horizon Europe
Logo: idem consortium