Fundación Vodafone has organized the 3^rd Connected by Accessibility Encounter (III Encuentro de Conectados por la Accesibilidad) with the aim of increasing the participation and autonomy of people with functional diversity, improving their quality of life and favoring their inclusion in society. During the encounter several projects were presented that use ICTs in various spheres of daily life, precisely with the needs of each person of our society in mind.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) figures, more than one billion people in the world live with some form of disability, of whom nearly 200 million experience considerable difficulties in functioning. In the interests of building an all-embracing society, all of us must be capable of using ICTs as a fountainhead of resources to favor social inclusion of one and all.

A sound use of technology promotes equality by improving learning processes, strengthening the acquired learning, facilitating and improving information-access and communication, among many other benefits. Technology should hence be used as a means of spanning the digital divide, both for people with disability and those without.

With the overarching aim of promoting the development of groundbreaking services and solutions that favor all-round, across-the-board accessibility, GMV was present at Fundación Vodafone’s event, presenting the benefits to be offered by Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, in combination with other devices, to facilitate many actions of our daily life.

We at GMV are committed to carrying out innovation-based, diversity-favoring social actions to confront the growing number of challenges presented by today’s environment.

The foundation called Fundación Vodafone España is a private, not-for-profit institution acting under the aegis of the Ministry of Education. It works to promote ICT-based solutions and support for people suffering from any sort of disability and for the elderly, doing so through the Social Project and Innovation units.