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Dinper: inclusive design from the

university.
Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow
Jan 31 · 5 min read

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Note: this article was first published in spanish and can be found here.

Collaboration between universities, third sector entities and companies is

key to the development of innovative tools that solve both generic and more
individualized social problems.

An example of this can be seen in the Dinper project (Personalized Inclusive

Design) that was born in 2011 as a natural evolution of the Group of
Educational Innovation in Technical Education of the University of Burgos
(UBU).

Dinper is an interfaculty and interdisciplinary group composed of

professors from the Escuela Politécnica Superior and the Facultad de
Humanidades y Educación of the UBU that promotes and develops
applications and projects for people with disabilities, always
focusing on the particularities of each one of them and in a way that the
barriers that the people of that group find in their day to day are eliminated.

Among its lines of action are motor disability (brain paralysis), hearing
impairment, early childhood and special education, alternative and
augmentative communication systems, as well as human-computer
interfaces.

In Dinper they consider that, for the realization of their projects, simply
having the resources and the technical part is not enough, and they imply
that the most important part to achieve achievements is in the
professionals.

Pedro Sanchez Ortega, member of the interdisciplinary research group,

stresses that “if something has taught us our work with people with
disabilities, it is the importance of motivation, effort and
improvement as the best engine of change possible to achieve a truly
inclusive society. and that works for the common good”.

A work that, as it has been developed, has also generated several

publications, patents and theses related to the field of inclusive
development.

Final works of degree with social purpose.

Most of the final projects of degree and end of degree that are made in our
universities serve simply to finish the studies and get stuck in a drawer of
oblivion.

But Dinper thought that some of these projects could be focused from the
beginning to solve specific problems of people who need support, thus
reversing the effort and knowledge deployed from the university to society.

Almost all these projects are born of specific needs of groups and / or
individuals, and many of them have been made as a proposal in agreement
with the entities of persons with disabilities such as Apace Burgos,
Aransbur, Autismo Burgos and others.

On other occasions, the students themselves are the ones who come with
concerns about the specific needs of someone around them, afterwards an
assessment is made from a psycho-socio-educational point of view and an
analysis with the engineering team of the most technical aspects and the
possibility of carrying out the project.

As a result of all its efforts and achievements, it is worth noting that Dinper
has achieved the so-called innovative public procurement technology offer
of the Junta de Castilla y León, which allows the Administration to contract
the development of new products or services and acquire those that still are
not in the market.

Partnerships with the disability sector.

Dinper has established agreements with various entities of persons with
disabilities, within which projects tend to materialize.

When carrying out projects, handicaps tend to be more economic than

technical. This is because some entities of the disability do not have a
sufficient budget to finance the expenses of the projects.

One of the outstanding projects carried out within these alliances is the
TifloCalc calculator that was developed with the support of the ONCE, from
the loan of specific tools to ensure compatibility during the development
and monitoring phase of the project up to the participation in the phase of
validation to check that it was fully functional, transparent and compatible.

In this case, a working functional prototype was created, waiting to obtain a

new financing that allows to continue adding new functionalities to the
calculator, thus having a pre-series product.

Collaborations with the education sector.

Within the Dinper initiative, collaborations are also carried out with
training entities such as public schools.

A good example of this is the project carried out with the CEIP Francisco de
Vitoria, which is a public reference center for students with motor
disabilities, and in which very good results have been obtained through a
customized adaptation called “On-screen interface”.

On-screen interface is an application that allows you to operate a

computer through a virtual keyboard and mouse in the same way you would
with a physical keyboard and mouse, using either the space bar, pressing
any key (very useful in cases of low manual precision) or with any of the
mouse buttons (can be combined with adapted buttons that emulate these
buttons).

This adaptation was worthy of the Prototype Scholarship, the

UBUemprende Award and the 1st Equal Opportunities Prize organized by
the Comisión de Igualdad de la Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica
IndustrialBarcelona (UPC).

In addition, other solutions have been designed with the aim of facilitating
the education of people with disabilities, such as AUREA, which is an
augmented reality application aimed at teaching children with brain
paralysis.

Next steps of the Project.

For the time being, the solutions offered by Dinper are small-scale and its
marketing has not yet been carried out beyond some attempts made to
make contact with companies.

Within the objectives of the project is to demonstrate that the model of final
degree and master’s projects for social and educational purposes are likely
to be carried out in any university. But by the degree of personalization and
adaptation to concrete problems that the solutions have, it becomes difficult
to commercialize them on a large scale.

Due to the non-profit nature of the project, potential users are provided
with technical aids that, if developed by companies, would in most cases be
very expensive, which would make it quite difficult for them to be accessible
from the economic point of view for many people.

But Dinper seeks formulas to be able to go more in the commercialization of

the solutions and in this way facilitate from an economic point of view the
creation of new projects.

When a project is carried out, the intellectual property is registered on it

and this allows to be able to carry out negotiations and assignments to
companies with the commitment to carry out its commercialization once its
potential is demonstrated.

It is also intended to expand the focus of actions, incorporating other

aspects related to health and not focused exclusively on people with
disabilities (and therefore with a greater target audience).

Sample of this last is the UBUfarma project, which is a computer

application that facilitates the correct taking of medicines to patients who
need it, and UBUnurse, aimed at improving the quality of the
assessments, efficiency and effectiveness of the nursing staff at the same
time that the information collection system in the home assistance is
modernized.

It is also among the next objectives of Dinper to promote the development

of self-employment among students, which is to be done through the
Entrepreneur Graduate Office and the generation of success stories that
serve as references for new students to be encouraged to create your own
company.

Disability Innovation Design Process Education University

Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability,
Reputation and Corporate Communication,and integration of people
with disabilities.

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