Indra and Red Ilumno de universidades create a chair for Accessible Technologies

Indra and Red Ilumno, a network comprised of nine universities in Latin America, including the Brazilian ones Universidade Veiga de Almeida (UVA) and Centro Universitário Jorge Amado (UNIJORGE), signed an Accessible Technologies Chair for the development of a project aiming to provide more extensive access to distance higher education for people with disabilities, through technology. The signing of the agreement took place in Rio de Janeiro in the presence of the dean of Red Ilumno, Oscar Aguer, the dean of UNIJORGE, Guilherme Marback and the dean of UVA, Arlindo Cardarett Vianna, among others. Representing Indra at the signing ceremony was Ángeles Mera, Communications and Corporate Responsibility Director of Indra in Brazil.

The Chair with Red Ilumno is Indra's first in Brazil and will jointly involve various institutions in Latin America, including UVA and UNIJORGE, which is the project leader. The Chair will take an estimated four years to be finalized and envisages various stages, starting with a diagnosis to identify the main needs of those with disabilities with regard to distance learning and digital inclusion, in order to subsequently propose the technologies that will meet those needs.

“We are very pleased with this agreement because it is in line with our corporate responsibility premise, which is to take advantage of our expertise in innovation and state-of-the-art technology and give society something that can really make a difference to peoples' lives", states Edenilson Fleishmann, general manager of Indra in Brazil.

This international collaboration was encouraged by UNIJORGE and this collaborative project is another important step forward for the institution. “We believe in extensive access to quality higher education and this agreement is consistent with that vision. We are experiencing a society that is increasingly permeable to human diversities and, as such, it is of the utmost importance to discuss aspects related to inclusion. In addition, we are co-operating with staff training and the dissemination and consolidation of research into accessibility, a recent topic in the academic world", states Dr. Guilherme Marback, dean of UNIJORGE and director of the Chair in Distance Learning Accessibility.

Indra has ongoing co-operation with learning institutions in order for them to fulfill their Chairs and in total has eleven partnerships with universities which have already developed technologies with global reach, as is the case of HeadMouse and the Virtual Keyboard. These softwares help people with reduced mobility to use the computer autonomously and have already been downloaded more than 400,000 times worldwide. The Chair signed with Red Ilumno is another addition to more than 40 R&D projects that Indra has already carried out worldwide. In Latin America there are another two Chairs, one in Argentina and another in Mexico.

About Indra

Indra has been present in Brazil since 1996 and is one of the leading consultancy and technology companies in the country. It currently has a team of over 7,500 professionals, 5 Software Labs and is present in 14 States. The multinational has a differentiated offer of high added-value solutions and services for many sectors: finance, energy and utilities, telecommunications, public administration and health, industry, transport and traffic, and security and defense.

Indra, chaired by Javier Monzón, is one of the main multinational consultancy and technology companies, the leader in Europe and Latin America and is currently expanding into other regions with emerging economies. Innovation is its core business, highly focused on the client, and the root of its sustainability. The multinational is among the top European companies in its sector for investments in R&D, having invested more than 570 M€ in the last three years. With sales of approximately 3,000 M€, it has 43,000 professionals and clients in 138 countries.

About Red Ilumno

Red Ilumno is a non-profit network of higher education institutions which use centers of excellence to transform the traditional education paradigm, providing more extensive access to quality higher education. To achieve this, Ilumno offers in-person and distance learning programs at the different levels offered by ten higher education institutions: Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21 (Argentina), Centro Universitário Jorge Amado and Universidade Veiga de Almeida (Brazil), Institución Universitaria Politécnico Grancolombiano and Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina(Colombia), Universidad San Marcos (Costa Rica), Instituto Profesional Providencia – IPP (Chile), Universidad Americana (Paraguay), CECAR (Corporación Universitaria del Caribe) and Universidad Del Istmo(Panama).