Our mission is rooted in the belief that everyone deserves equal access to opportunities and resources necessary for full societal participation. We focus on initiatives that tackle social exclusion, economic disparities, and limited access to essential services, such as education and legal support. By fostering reflection and dialogue, we seek actionable solutions to empower political, social, and economic actors in addressing systemic barriers.
Key initiatives include promoting equal access to legal aid, supporting inclusive education and assisting marginalized groups, such as migrants, individuals with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged families. Efforts range from offering targeted legal services and developing intercultural education programs to advancing inclusive policy recommendations that empower communities.
The ISJ TIG is built on collaboration. By future partnering with other thematic interest groups (TIGs) within the STARS EU network, we will extend the reach of our work, integrating the principles of inclusion and social justice across diverse sectors. From enhancing digital literacy among underserved populations to promoting sustainable practices and encouraging cultural diversity through the arts, every initiative is driven by the core values of equity and social responsibility.
A key principle of the ISJ TIG is acknowledging the persistence of systemic inequalities. Many marginalized communities face barriers that deny them the same rights, opportunities, and protections enjoyed by others. Over the next three years, the TIG will focus on dismantling these barriers. Through a multi-faceted approach, the TIG will work to create pathways for marginalized groups to participate fully in society. One of the primary areas of focus will be access to legal assistance, ensuring that vulnerable communities have the support they need to seek justice. Legal aid is crucial for protecting rights, preventing exploitation, and addressing discrimination. The ISJ TIG is committed to providing the legal resources necessary to empower these communities.
Education is a powerful tool for social mobility, yet for many, accessing quality education remains a significant challenge. Financial constraints, geographical isolation, discrimination, and a lack of specialized support for individuals with disabilities or learning difficulties all contribute to the barriers preventing many from achieving their academic potential. The ISJ TIG works to ensure that educational systems are inclusive and cater to the diverse needs of students. By developing programs that encourage intercultural competence and inclusivity, we aim to create learning environments where all students feel valued and can thrive.
Additionally, we are promoting Blended Intensive Programs (BIPs) that combine flexibility and academic rigor, offering students the opportunity to learn in an inclusive, supportive setting. These initiatives are crucial for improving educational equity, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of background, have access to the tools and resources they need to succeed.
One of the critical challenges we aim to address is social exclusion. Marginalized groups, such as migrants, people with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged families, often face exclusion from key aspects of society. This exclusion leads to limited access to vital services like healthcare, housing, and employment, further perpetuating poverty and inequality. The ISJ TIG focuses on developing initiatives that foster the integration and participation of these groups in all areas of life.Â
A key component of this work is promoting community engagement and civic responsibility; by encouraging volunteerism, active citizenship, and organizing community-driven initiatives, we create environments where marginalized individuals feel empowered to contribute and thrive.
For marginalized individuals to access effective services, professionals in education and law must be equipped with the knowledge and skills to address the unique challenges faced by these communities. The ISJ TIG is committed to enhancing the capabilities of educators and legal practitioners through specialized training programs and workshops. These professional development opportunities will focus on inclusion, cultural competence, and equitable service delivery. Our goal is to create a network of well-trained professionals who are not only experts in their fields but also champions of social justice, ensuring that all individuals, especially those from marginalized communities, have access to compassionate and competent services.
Together, researchers, educators, and students in the ISJ TIG will continue working to address systemic inequalities, improve access to legal and educational resources and foster social inclusion, ensuring that no one is left behind in the pursuit of social justice.
STARS EU
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to