This study examines the intricate relationship between smartphone usage among Italian university students and their understanding of the environmental consequences associated with smartphone production and consumption.
The research integrates quantitative data from a survey of 230 communication undergraduates from Macerata, Bologna and Florence with qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews to explore patterns of usage, social meanings and levels of ecological awareness. The study reveals a pervasive dependence on smartphones coupled with a limited understanding of the extractive and energy-intensive processes behind their manufacture.
The pandemic intensified both usage and the associated psychological effects, revealing ambivalence towards digital technologies. Drawing on theories of digital degrowth and technological colonialism (Couldry & Mejias, 2019), the study highlights the urgent need to promote digital ecological education and encourage collective action in order to transition towards more sustainable and equitable models of technological consumption.
Only through combined efforts in raising awareness, providing education and implementing policies can consumers influence structural changes that would reduce the environmental footprint and address the global inequalities inherent in digital capitalism.The future of smartphone production and consumption is thus at a crucial crossroads.On the one hand, growing global demand and technological innovation are driving continued market expansion, with significant implications for resource extraction, energy production, and e-waste management. On the other, growing awareness of environmental and social impacts is driving an urgent need to rethink more sustainable and circular consumption models, encouraging repair, recycling, and extending the lifespan of devices. In this scenario, digital ecology education plays a strategic role, as it can foster greater individual and collective responsibility, promoting conscious practices of critical use and consumption.

In 2025, Greece continues to serve as both a gateway and a bottleneck for refugees seeking protection in Europe. This paper critically examines the evolving landscape of refugee rights in Greece, focusing on the tension between international legal obligations and national policy responses. The European Union’s shifting asylum framework, border management practices, and increasing reliance on externalization strategies have exacerbated legal and humanitarian concerns. In Greece, these pressures manifest in restrictive asylum procedures, deteriorating reception conditions, and systemic challenges to access justice and social rights for asylum seekers and recognized refugees.
Through a doctrinal analysis of international, European, and Greek legal frameworks—especially the 1951 Refugee Convention, the EU Common European Asylum System (CEAS), and Greece’s Law 4636/2019—the paper assesses whether current policies align with fundamental rights standards. Empirical data from recent reports, court cases, and field assessments are used to contextualize the legal critique. Particular attention is given to vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied minors and survivors of gender-based violence, who face disproportionate risks under current reception and detention regimes.
The paper argues that while Greece remains legally bound to uphold refugee rights, operational deficiencies, political pressures, and EU policy gaps have created an environment of conditional protection and limited legal remedies. It concludes with policy recommendations aimed at restoring rights-based asylum procedures, improving compliance with international standards, and enhancing solidarity mechanisms within the EU.

Introduction: Chronic Venous Disease (CVD) is one of the most widespread yet institutionally underestimated conditions in contemporary healthcare. Despite its high prevalence and the significant burden it places on patients’ daily lives, it is often perceived as secondary or purely aesthetic. This tension reflects broader dynamics in the social construction of medical legitimacy, where life-threatening conditions attract institutional focus, while chronic but non-fatal illnesses remain culturally and professionally devalued. Methods: This qualitative study draws on semi-structured online interviews with 20 vascular surgeons—each representing a different Italian region—to explore how medical professionals construct and navigate the social meaning of CVD in their practice. Results: Findings illustrate a profound mismatch between the systemic complexity of CVD and its marginal status within clinical and institutional discourse. While all participants recognize the chronicity, socio-economic burden, and psychological impact of advanced CVD (e.g., venous ulcers, bleeding, etc.), they also describe it as a “Cinderella pathology”—routinely overshadowed by more acutely framed arterial diseases. Surgeons report observing different patient behaviors: arterial patients act with urgency and fear, while venous patients often display resignation or delay care. These attitudes are influenced by systemic failures, including poor public health communication, limited primary care integration, and lack of policy support for preventive and long-term care—particularly in underserved areas. Conclusions: By foregrounding the lived experiences and reflections of health professionals, this study contributes to the sociological understanding of how chronicity, medical hierarchy, and institutional inattention coalesce to shape healthcare delivery. It calls for a reconfiguration of health priorities that values everyday suffering, promotes equity, and recognizes the silent yet substantial burden of CVD within broader societal systems.

Introduction:
Social inclusion and participation are core determinants of health and wellbeing, particularly for individuals with disabilities. Occupational therapy (OT), when viewed through a sociological lens, can act as a transformative force that empowers individuals to reclaim meaningful roles in their communities. This study aims to explore the experiences of adults with acquired physical disabilities in relation to occupational identity and reintegration, emphasizing the role of community-based OT interventions.

Methods:
A qualitative phenomenological design was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 adult participants (aged 28–64) who had acquired disabilities (e.g., post-stroke, traumatic injury) and participated in community-based occupational therapy programs in two urban rehabilitation centers in Greece. Interviews focused on perceived changes in occupational identity, social relationships, and participation in daily life. Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis framework.

Results:
Three overarching themes emerged: (1) "Loss and Reclamation of Occupational Self", describing the disruption and gradual reconstruction of identity; (2) "Barriers to Participation", including structural inaccessibility and societal stigma; and (3) "The Empowering Role of Occupational Therapy", highlighting individualized, culturally sensitive interventions that fostered agency, self-efficacy, and community involvement.

Conclusions:
This study underscores the critical importance of contextualized, participatory OT practices that align with sociological principles of equity and inclusion. Occupational therapists are uniquely positioned to advocate for structural and attitudinal changes while co-creating inclusive occupational opportunities with service users. The findings support a broader, non-medicalized understanding of disability aligned with the social model and human rights frameworks.

Fostering inclusive design is not easy considering uneven attention in design education to teaching about diversity, disability, design-for-all, and universal design. Inclusive design means to design for/with as many people as possible who embody the widest range of abilities with a myriad of life experiences. Our objectives are the following: (1) identify how design professionals talk spontaneously about inclusive design and (2) trace the sociocultural capital that has the potential to inform designing and teaching practices. Fourteen design professionals, who are practitioners and teachers simultaneously, from nine counties and seven locations, were independently interviewed about design practice, processes, and education. This research differs from more controlled approaches (e.g., protocol analysis, direct inquiries about inclusion, disability, diversity) in that it accepts that data are largely driven by negotiated discussions between researchers and interviewees. This approach is invaluable when investigating more abstract research questions like perceptions of the design profession. Data analyses of verbatim transcriptions of individual 2- to 3.5-hour interviews were coded for direct references and indirect inferences related to inclusive design. These interviews produced stories of designers’ educational backgrounds, experience in practice, and influences (i.e., individuals, other resources). The resulting data are rich narratives about designing and design teaching that reflect the personal values, beliefs and actions of the interviewees. Out of our fourteen interviewees, eleven spontaneously discussed inclusion, diversity, disability, inclusive design, design-for-all, and/or universal design. It also reveals that our interviewees have deep, intimate connections and experiences with disability in some way (e.g., family member, friend, or through school/work), rather than specific education in inclusive design. They also discuss how these experiences are transformed into being a design professional. Our presentation promises to center the voices of our interviewees towards better understanding how people’s sociocultural capital influences attitudes and behaviors connected to inclusion and diversity.

Design continuously evolves in response to societal change, shaping and being shaped by how people live and care for one another. In healthcare, care is a central professional and ethical principle, yet its design dimensions remain underexplored in medical education. While clinicians understand care in daily practice, they are often unaware of how design can extend care beyond individual encounters toward systemic, technological, and societal transformation.

This paper reports on Designing Health Systems, an ongoing online course delivered by the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at University of Alberta, Canada, to 60 second-year medical students at the Wenzhou Medical University, China. The course invites students to explore how professional care could be expressed through meaningful innovations at different scales—individual, cultural, and systemic—and pathways such as products, resources, programs, and policy initiatives.

Situated within the emerging AI/Hybrid Design Paradigm, where human and technological forms of care increasingly intertwine and reconfigure clinicians’ roles, instructors wrote and shared letters of care as prompts for dialogue. These were synthesized into a collective letter to the cohort, followed by targeted letters providing feedback to project groups. The letters embodied care as both a relational and epistemic act—modeling rather than merely teaching what caring design entails.

Adopting a pedagogical design research approach grounded in reflective practice (Schön, 1983), we iteratively reflected in and on action by producing and discussing letters, student responses, and innovations. This process revealed that educating through care enacts the values we aim to teach. Analysis shows how students reciprocated this experience by developing a sense of care toward their projects, evident in the authenticity rooted in personal experiences and clinical reflections rather than AI content. Ultimately, this work aims to nurture clinicians who collaboratively create ethical, humane, and sustainable health-system innovations that uphold care as a foundational value in the AI/Hybrid Design Era.

This study aims to develop a practical guideline for adapting track and field events in school physical education programs for students with physical disabilities. The guideline is grounded in international standards set by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and World Athletics, along with recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) on physical activity for persons with disabilities and UNESCO principles on inclusive education. The need for such a resource emerges from the noticeable scarcity of applied frameworks that demonstrate how athletic events can be adapted for students with physical impairments in school settings—an issue that limits their opportunities for participation, engagement, and motor development when compared to their peers.

This study employed the descriptive method by reviewing the relevant literature, previous studies, international regulations, and recognized para-sport adaptation manuals to extract applicable principles for school environments. The proposed guideline outlines procedures for adapting races and field events, modifying equipment and assistive devices, adjusting officiating rules, and restructuring movement pathways to suit students’ functional abilities.

The findings support the feasibility and value of implementing adapted athletics programs in schools, as they contribute to enhancing physical competence, increasing participation levels, promoting motivation toward physical activity, and strengthening social inclusion and self-confidence among students with physical disabilities. Accordingly, this study recommends adopting the proposed guideline within physical education curricula and providing professional development for PE teachers to ensure effective implementation that aligns with students’ physical and developmental characteristics.

Background: People with intellectual disabilities (PwIDD) face an increased risk of developing cancer and encounter multiple barriers to participating in screening programs, including limited awareness, communication challenges, and lack of social support. Cancer remains a major public health issue in Slovakia, yet participation in national screening programs remains below the European average. Strengthening social support from caregivers and healthcare professionals is essential to promote participation and understanding of preventive health measures. Methods: Within the European COST Action CUPID project CA21123 (Cancer Understanding, Prevention and Improved Detection for People with Intellectual Disabilities), a Summer School in Prague brought together participants from across Europe to co-create inclusive health communication tools. Results: As part of this collaboration, easy-to-read information material was developed to promote understanding of cancer prevention and screening. The Slovak version was adapted to national screening programs (breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer) and designed to meet the communication needs of PwIDD. The Slovak version of the easy-to-read material can also be used as a supportive educational activity in the course of health education for nursing students and to raise awareness for caregivers. Conclusion: This initiative demonstrates how accessible communication and international collaboration can improve cancer prevention and promote equity in health.

Acknowledgment: This work is based upon work from COST Action CUPID CA21123, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). The authors also gratefully acknowledge all participants of the CUPID Summer School in Prague for their collaboration.

Inclusivity has become a central theme in the development of digital technologies. Designing with inclusivity in mind requires that systems remain accessible and valuable to users irrespective of their age, gender, or socio-economic background. However, most applications remain restricted to a single language—primarily English—thereby marginalizing large groups of non-English-speaking individuals. This work explores the integration of Computer Vision (CV) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enhance accessibility for visually impaired users, with a particular emphasis on multilingual support in assistive technologies. Through a review of the existing literature and user experiences, the study identifies language barriers as a major obstacle in accessing essential services. To address this, we employ a multi-stage methodology for multilingual image captioning. Image–caption pairs were extracted from the MS COCO dataset, reformatted into JSON, and translated from English to the local language (currently Hindi) to generate a bilingual corpus. The model combines Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) for image feature extraction with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) units for sequence generation, enabling the system to capture temporal dependencies inherent to natural language. Experimental outcomes indicate that the model can generate Hindi captions with about 80% accuracy, effectively describing visual scenes despite some grammatical limitations. Real-time camera integration and a text-to-voice module further enhance usability by delivering immediate audio captions to visually impaired users. Future work will focus on transformer-based multilingual architectures and larger datasets to improve accuracy, contextual richness, and language coverage, moving towards a robust, speech-enabled assistive platform.

Introduction: The increasing digitization of society has exacerbated the digital divide, particularly affecting older adults and creating significant barriers to social participation. This study addresses this challenge by analyzing the role of informal support networks in facilitating digital inclusion. These individuals, found within an older adult's immediate social circle, offer accessible, non-professional technological assistance. Understanding their characteristics and potential is crucial for developing effective community-based interventions to bridge this gap.

Methods: A qualitative methodological approach was employed. Data were collected through two focus groups with older adults (n=16) and semi-structured interviews with additional older adults (n=8) and potential informal experts (n=5), including family members, local merchants, and volunteers. The study aimed to identify the ideal profiles, desired characteristics, and challenges associated with these informal support figures from the perspective of both those receiving and providing help.

Results: The findings indicate that informal experts are most often family members, although neighbors and community professionals also play a role. Participants highly valued non-technical attributes such as patience, trustworthiness, availability, and the ability to explain complex tasks in simple terms. Key limitations identified were the lack of availability of these support figures and the significant emotional burden associated with both requesting and providing assistance. Furthermore, the study identified the emergence of "virtual" informal experts, such as voice assistants, AI chatbots, and online content creators, which expand the traditional definition of the concept.

Conclusion: Informal experts are a key resource for promoting the digital inclusion of older adults. The preference for relational, patient, and accessible support over formal technical expertise highlights the need for community-based interventions that empower these informal networks. These interventions can play a vital role in identifying, training, and supporting these individuals to create sustainable ecosystems of digital support.