Cross-origin Resource Sharing in Android via Ionic and Cordova

My issue is similar to this question.

I have an HTML5-based Android app. It is wrapped in Cordova, and built using the Ionic Framework. When launched, the app loads an index.html file, which is located locally on the device and makes a cross-origin resource request. It therefore does not load for Android API 18 and higher.

The workaround to this restriction is to enable the setAllowUniversalAccessFromFileURLs setting. Given that my project is built using the Ionic Framework, what would be the correct way to enable this flag? Would I necessarily need to go into the Android project to enable the flag, or is there a cleaner way to do it via a settings file?

I have inherited this project and have very little experience with Ionic, Cordova, and HTML5, therefore any detail would be greatly appreciated. In the question above, the solution was to update to Cordova 2.8.1. I am running Cordova 5.1.1. and still experience the problem.