AI assistant to support vocational training internships for autistic students

In the 2024/2025 academic year, more than 3,000 autistic students were enrolled in vocational training programmes in Spain. They accounted for just 3.5% of the total, a much lower proportion than in other stages of education, according to data from the Spanish Autism Confederation. One of the reasons is that, in post-compulsory education, support for students with special educational needs is significantly reduced, which in turn affects their enrolment and ability to remain in education.

The EU co-funded Access2Work AI project aims to help address this problem by focusing on a key stage in these students' training: the point at which they undertake their first internships. Funded through the European Erasmus+ programme, the initiative is coordinated by Mònica Cerdán, a researcher in the Interdisciplinary Research Group on ICT - Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (i2TIC-IA Lab) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). Also, Ana Isabel Jiménez Zarco, from the same research group, and José Carlos Ramos, from the Knowledge and Information Management in Organizations Research Group (KIMO), participated in one stage of the project. All three belong to the Digital Transformation and Governance Research Centre (UOC-DIGIT) and are members of the UOC's Faculty of Economics and Business.

The aim is to develop an educational framework with accessible materials and an AI assistant to help prepare students for this transition into the world of work in advance, in a structured way, and with support from professionals.

Guidance and information at a key stage

When they reach the internships stage of their vocational training, autistic students can encounter certain difficulties. Often, the problem is not a lack of knowledge, but insufficient preparation for the workplace, being placed in companies that are not a good fit for their profile, or a lack of support throughout the process. For example, tutors often have neither the knowledge nor the time needed to adapt to the needs of autistic students.

The Access2Work AI project was launched in response to the need to improve accessibility and inclusion during the internships stage, which represents the student's first sustained contact with a real-world working environment. "If this stage is not accessible and inclusive, it can lead to anxiety, interruptions to internships, delays in completing the qualification or dropping out, even when the student has the required technical skills," explained Mònica Cerdán, the project's principal investigator. "Improving this stage can help prevent exclusion that can continue into working life, make better use of skills and talent that often remain unseen, and increase students' autonomy and confidence," she added.

According to Cerdán, the solution lies in making expectations explicit, better preparing students, anticipating the support they may need and ensuring that the company where they will carry out their internship is a good match for their profile. To achieve this, the project proposes creating a competency framework to serve as a reference for tutors, designing accessible training materials and developing an AI tool capable of answering questions and providing guidance to both students and tutors.

AI as a support tool

Access2Work is developing an AI tool that will be integrated into an accessible, multilingual web platform and will provide instant answers to common questions about preparing for internships. "For students, it will provide predictable, step-by-step guidance on issues such as CVs, workplace routines, company expectations, accessibility rights and conditions, and how to deal with unexpected situations. For tutors, it will provide guidance on inclusion, company placements, communication, and student support and monitoring," explained Cerdán.

The AI tool will be limited to the field of vocational training internships and will not provide information on other topics. It will be based on the project's competency framework, educational modules and ethical protocols. The competency framework defines the competencies, skills, strategies and support that students need before starting their internships. The accessible materials linked to this framework will help students and tutors anticipate workplace situations and deal with them step by step in a safe environment.

Therefore, the AI tool will not replace the tutor, but will serve as a source of support. Another key feature of the project is that students will not only be end users of these tools, but also co-creators and evaluators. "In the first phase, 12 autistic students, six vocational training tutors and two representatives of SMEs will help identify the situations that need to be addressed, as well as the clearest and most useful ways of presenting the information, language, examples and types of interaction," said Cerdán.

"Subsequently, another 40 autistic students from vocational training centres in Lithuania and Slovenia will test the platform and the AI tool together with a group of between 12 and 16 tutors. They will assess its clarity, usefulness, cognitive accessibility and potential overload, and their feedback will be used to refine the content and functionality before the validated version is finalized," added the researcher, who is affiliated with the UOC-DIGIT research centre.

A project with a European reach

The UOC is coordinating and developing the educational and technological aspects of the project, which will run from September 2026 to February 2028, in collaboration with the vocational training centres Kautech in Lithuania and Šolski Center Velenje in Slovenia. Following the initial phase, the pilot project will be tested at these centres. 

"By testing the solution in Spain, Lithuania and Slovenia, we will be able to gather evidence of its usefulness across different vocational training systems, languages and workplace contexts. The main results will be published as open educational resources in Spanish, Lithuanian, Slovenian and English," said Cerdán. Moreover, the project includes the creation of a replication toolkit that explains how to adapt the framework, materials, platform and AI configuration with limited technical and financial requirements. This will enable the project to be replicated by different centres.

"The aim is to reach out to at least 150 vocational training centres across Europe and secure documented interest from at least 30% of them – that is, 45 centres – in testing or adapting the model. The UOC plans to keep the platform available for at least three years after the project ends. In this way, we hope that Access2Work AI will not remain an isolated pilot, but will contribute to ensuring that accessibility and neuroinclusion become an integral part of preparing autistic students for internships," concluded the researcher. 

This project is part of the Education of the future research mission and promotes the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 4, Quality Education; 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth; and 10, Reduced Inequalities. 

Co-funded by the European Union (2026-1-ES01-KA210-VET-000459335). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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