What is Hephastus?

This project, started in 2022 as a research project, consists of an online sales website to make it easier to find products adapted for a group of people with certain motor disabilities, within the domestic sphere. On the one hand, our team knows that when we try to find products that suit our needs, it is not easy, and we can often spend a lot of time trying to satisfy our needs. For example, if a person with partial blindness, with the help of a person, tries to find an adapted television remote (as it could be with Braille), it would take a long time if they searched for it on online shopping platforms such as Amazon or similar. Our goal is to try to reduce this search time and, therefore, make the digital shopping experience more inclusive.

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The motivation that has led us to choose this topic is that we are increasingly realizing that there are certain groups of people within society who are isolated in the virtual world (of the internet), such as the elderly or people with some type of disability, in this case monoplegia, hemiplegia and hemiparesis. In fact, these groups, mostly abandoned by our society, have special needs and, therefore, need specific products to satisfy them. It is for this reason that we have decided to try to solve part of this problem that is so big that it is not given all the importance that we believe it deserves, since we want everyone to be able to have the same level of ease as much as integration into everyday life.

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Lastly, we believe that it could become a very interesting project, and above all beneficial for many people, because there are not many people who stop to think about these congregations, and, therefore, this means that they are increasingly more isolated from society. Also, if we are presented with more facilities within the virtual world every day, why shouldn't these communities have them? There are many cases of older people who get lost shopping online or cannot find the desired product, although really, if you know how to look for it, it is there. It is because of these detonated people that we believe that this problem is not given enough importance, that they are not being helped enough, and therefore, we will try to help them as far as possible.