90BISA0075

The US is experiencing workforce shortages in sectors such as manufacturing, hospitality, food service and logistics. Ironically, these could be filled by employees with an intellectual disability (ID), such as those with autism, Down Syndrome, and those who have had a brain injury. Yet people with ID are under employed. To help fill the gap left by the shortage of job coaches, new evidence supports the concept that AI-assisted task analysis tools can help employees with ID better understand the job task to be performed at the appropriate detail. Without GOALS, supervisors must rely on traditional approaches. Combined with the critical shortage of job coaches, and job trends (increased mobility, increased flexibility and changing work assignments) this will exacerbate the strain on scarce resources and threaten employment sustainability of many employees with an ID. This project will demonstrate the technical merit, feasibility, and cost effectiveness of combining available web-based tools, AI, and an innovative approach to create the GOALS system. Specific Phase I objectives include: 1) determine end user requirements, 2) develop a proof-of-concept prototype of the system, and 3) evaluate of the utility of the prototype with employees with an ID, their job coaches, and supervisor at their employer.