The European project “EMPOWER: Design and evaluation of technological support tools to empower stakeholders in digital education” ended in October 2025, after three years of work, with the creation and implementation of a unique technological learning platform to improve personalised education for children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The initiative's website has been completely renewed following its conclusion, and the tool is available for download, along with all training materials.
The European Commission's Research Executive Agency (REA) has co-funded the project through the Horizon Europe programme, having been selected in the call for proposals entitled “Inclusion in times of change”, within the “Transformations” call of the aforementioned programme.
The main objective of EMPOWER has been to train teachers so that they can better support children in schools with regard to their emotional and behavioural difficulties and, ultimately, improve their quality of life.
The initiative team has benefited from the contribution of teachers, psychologists and developers to co-design a platform that uses eye-tracking technology together with other sensors. In addition, the project has designed various training materials and carried out several scientific studies aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
The EMPOWER consortium has been led by the University of Valencia, which coordinated this initiative from the IRTIC. Researchers at the institute highlight the positive reception the platform has received at the various participating schools, with great enthusiasm for its use shown by students, teachers and families alike, who wish to continue using this tool once the project has ended.
It has also involved the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania and the University Research Institute of Lisbon in Portugal, two research centres specialised in special education and psychology; as well as with the University of Stichting Radboud in the Netherlands, the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering in Portugal, the Hogskulen pa vestlandet University in Norway and the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, which are four university departments in the technological area specialising in artificial intelligence, eye-tracking and biosensors.
In addition, the company IT Data Telekom from Romania has been in charge of the creation of training contents. The association Autism-Europe, an organisation based in Brussels that gathers around a hundred organisations from more than 40 European countries, has completed this consortium leading the dissemination of the project results.
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