[NFBP-Talk] Fwd: [tech-vi Announce List] New organization helps blind workers find their dream jobs in cybersecurity - SC Magazine

[Jan Lattuca]

Hi, all.  I thought I'd share this article with you.  It seems like
NIB used to be kind of a bad guy in services for the blind, but maybe
they've reformed.

Jan Lattuca

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Goldfield <david.goldfield at outlook.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 17:36:21 +0000
Subject: [tech-vi Announce List] New organization helps blind workers
find their dream jobs in cybersecurity - SC Magazine
To: "tech-vi at groups.iotv" <tech-vi at groups.io>

"Visually impaired accessible technology" - Google News - Friday,
February 12, 2021 at 9:10 PM

New organization helps blind workers find their dream jobs in
cybersecurity - SC Magazine

[https://www.scmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/02/DSC_2077-1024x718.jpg]Naveen
James, pictured here, was unable to land a job after graduating from
California State Polytechnic University Pomona in 2015.

Despite a sterling academic record, magna cum laude honors, and hearty
recommendations from his professors, Naveen James was unable to land a
job after graduating from California State Polytechnic University
Pomona in 2015.

Interview after interview, James would come up empty. No callback. And
it became hard not to believe that employment had eluded him because
no one would give him, a blind man, the opportunity to prove himself.

“I’d been getting a lot of interviews based on my résumé,” said James.
“But after I’d walk in, I did feel as though… they were kind of
hesitant. Maybe they were wondering how would this employee perform
the job.”

After some time, his dreams of landing a private-sector job
dissipated. “I thought I would get a job without any problem. I lost
faith.”

Born prematurely in India, James developed a rare congenital eye
condition called persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous.
Essentially, certain fetal vascular structures that are supposed to
regress after birth never did, due to excessive levels of oxygen in
his incubator. His left eye was left completely sightless, while his
right has limited vision – enough to count fingers on a hand. “Let’s
say I take a pic of a newspaper and put it close to my eyes, I can see
the headlines. No problem. But I cannot read the fine print of the
article itself,” said James.

Such challenges can make it hard to find work – which is why National
Industries for the Blind (NIB)<https://www.nib.org> last month
officially launched a new enterprise called NSITE, designed to connect
businesses with qualified job seekers who are blind or visually
impaired (BVI), and/or military veterans.

For 82 years, the non-profit organization has assisted BVI individuals
with job training and placement through its own workforce program – in
fact, the organization helped James ultimately land a job – but NIB’s
efforts have primarily been tied to government programs and contracts.
By spinning off NSITE, there is now an organization that can wholly
focus on generating BVI workforce development opportunities in the
private sector, expanding on NIB’s original efforts. As of late
January, NIB was in talks with about a half-dozen private
organizations in such sectors as cybersecurity, banking and energy.

The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)<https://www.afb.org>
counts more than 25 million U.S. adults who are blind or have low
vision. And roughly 70 percent of working-age BVI individuals in the
U.S. are unemployed, according to Jonathan Lucus, head of NSITE, even
as industries such as cybersecurity desperately seek sources of new
talent.

“A large percentage of them are unemployed because of those
misconceptions or preconceptions that companies have, employers have,
hiring managers have, of the abilities that these people bring to the
table,” said Lucus, who is also NIB’s senior director of workforce
development.

“Even those who are employed are often limited to a narrow band of
occupations that underutilize their skills and potential, due to
social stigma and attitudinal barriers that undermine their
opportunities for career advancement,” said Megan Aragon, chief
program officer at the AFB.

NSITE was created to “change hearts and minds,” Lucus continued, “to
help corporations understand that there’s a strategic advantage to
hiring people who are blind or visually impaired because there is a
large swath of the country who aren’t getting jobs, yet bring a
diverse skill set to the workforce and a diverse way of thinking, and
are extremely great problem solvers. They had to overcome their
disability, right?”

“So, we’re providing that conduit for taking this unused talent, and
placing them in jobs where employers are seeking to find that talent.”

Having the perspective of BVI workers on staff even help software
developers avoid certain security and privacy missteps that they might
otherwise overlook, according to Darren Burton, a sales consultant
with AFB Consulting (a division of the AFB) and former director of AFB
Tech.

Burton, who became blind in his young adulthood as the result of a
tumor, worked for over four years at Yahoo! as an accessibility
specialist. “I personally often worked with… our cybersecurity team at
Yahoo!, making sure we [would] keep accessibility in mind when
creating secure systems,” Burton told SC Media. “For people with
disabilities to have any digital security whatsoever, we must have
accessibility. When we have to ask for help from friend or relatives,
our privacy and security go right out the window. Having blind people
in these types of jobs will help to ensure that does not happen.”

Officially launched in January, NSITE offers a multitude of
employment-based services for employer and employee, including a
cloud-based talent management system (including pre-screening and
onboarding services), temp and outsourcing services, accessibility and
accommodation support, and consulting and advisory services.
Consulting includes corporate training for working with BVI
individuals, recognizing unconscious bias and inclusive leadership and
team building.

The organization also provides pre-training and certification programs
for candidates, and will help matched skilled candidates with the
right job for them.

Lucus said NSITE will take “a very wholistic approach to supporting
employers across the country. We provide talent, we train that talent,
we place that talent. And then we provide post-placement support. So
corporations are not just getting somebody and saying. ‘Okay, good
luck.’ We’re making sure that frontline managers, the hiring managers
and the new employees are successful in their roles.”

[https://www.scmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/02/Jonathan-Lucus-300x300.jpeg]Jonathan
Lucus, NSITE

NSITE will place job candidates across a variety of trades, but the
organization has placed a particularly strong emphasis on the infosec
space. “Our big push this year is to support the cybersecurity
industry,” said Lucus. Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia,
“we’re…surrounded by cybersecurity firms, and we feel like we really
good position to support these companies.”

The AFB offers similar programs. It’s AFB
Consulting<https://www.afb.org/about-afb/what-we-do/afb-consulting>
arm offers advisory services to assist organizations looking to hiring
employees with disabilities, helping them with “increasing their
revenue, creating an inclusive work culture, and ensuring disability
inclusion across mobile apps and websites,” said Aragon. And the AFB
Blind Leaders Development
Program<https://www.afb.org/research-and-initiatives/employment/blind-leaders-development-program>
aims to solve the lack of BVI representation in corporate leadership
positions through professional coaching, mentoring, networking and
soft skills and communication training.

Meanwhile, NIB will continue to support the cause in its own way. Just
last November, NIB became the first organization to launch a Cisco
Networking Academy CCNA (Cisco Certificated Network Associate)
training program designed specifically for BVI people.

“One of our participants already got a six-figure job offer even
before he completed the course, so we are very confident that we are
on the right track,” said Lucus. And other BVI cyber pros who have
gone through some of NIB’s other training, fellowship and scholarship
programs “are now CEOs of organizations.”

James is among those interested in taking the new Cisco Academy
training course. Indeed, it was through an NIB job listing through
that he landed a job at Global Connections to Employment
(GCE)<https://www.elakeviewcenter.org/GlobalConnectionsToEmployment>,
one of the largest employers of people with disabilities under the
federal government’s AbilityOne Program<https://www.abilityone.gov>.
Offering jobs in the areas of IT, business services, facilities
maintenance and more, GCE employs approximately 1,800 people across
the U.S.

Since January 2020, James has been working for GCE’s California branch
as a quality assurance specialist, though he is qualified to work jobs
in cyber as well. As part of his responsibilities, he reviews code
using a special connected device called a braille display. As he reads
through each line for errors, physical braille dots emerge from the
device, allowing him to scroll character by character with his fingers
and fix any mistakes. It’s one of several technology-based
accommodations that NIB and NSITE can help secure for the BVI
community, such as screen magnification software for those with
limited vision.

“With technology now, our folks can be in any job anyone else can be
in and actually excel,” said Lucus. “We have a number of individuals
who have gone through our training programs who are now CEOs of
organizations.”

A better understanding of how such technologies can help might even
dispel unfair presumptions employers have about the efficacy of
visually impaired workers.

“Misconceptions are always a roadblock to employment,” said Burton.
“Employers are often flabbergasted when they see a blind person using
a computer. Too many employers, regardless of the industry, have no
idea how our screen readers and other digital tools give us the
ability to work in nearly any industry.”

However, “The more we in the BVI community are seen out in the world
using these powerful tools, the faster these unfortunate
misconceptions will begin to fade away,” he added.

Other accessibility and accommodation tools include desktop and mobile
screen readers that audibly recite words and code aloud. “They allow
us to read any text or data onscreen, and to access the structural
interface of a website or software product,” said Burton. “We also
have techniques for accessing the content and descriptions of images
onscreen [and] powerful optical character recognition software to
access non-text elements and images of text.”

Additionally, some BVI workers have access to remotely-based human
assistants who look through the user’s phone “to see what is in front
of us and interpret anything visual,” added Burton.

“Even after I got a job on you know from GCE, the NIB were really
helpful… making sure that the environment, all the accommodations, are
up to par,” said James, who also requires a screen reader along with a
special accompanying component that can work with Citrix.

James reflected back to his youth in India, when he wasn’t even aware
he could use a screen reader to navigate around a computer
environment. At the time, he was using a slate and stylus and a
braille typewriter to compose his schoolwork.

“So what I was hoping then was that maybe I would become a social
worker,” said James. But in 12th grade, James moved to the U.S. and
was introduced to technology that made computers accessible to the
blind, and a whole new world opened to him. He decided to pursue
computers as a career, knowing this is an area where he could excel.

And now James can gladly say that he landed a dream job, adding that
his coworkers and management “stick up for their employees as much as
they do for their customers.”

“I’m really happy working here and I think that NIB has done a great
job,” said James. And once its NSITE initiative is fully up and
running, “it will do even… better.”

Topics:
Careers<https://www.scmagazine.com/tag/careers/>
Non-profit<https://www.scmagazine.com/tag/non-profit/>
Training<https://www.scmagazine.com/tag/training/>

https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/new-organization-helps-blind-workers-find-their-dream-jobs-in-cybersecurity/


     David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist

Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info


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