EnlightenMentors: The Autism AxisAbility Initiative

Every year, roughly 42,500 Americans diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are unemployed or underemployed. For a parent whose child is diagnosed with autism, one of the most pressing concerns is how their child is going to participate meaningfully in society and operate independently after education. With little access to employment-focused education or accessible job markets, those on the spectrum are left with few opportunities for growth and struggle to find pathways to adapt to an ever-changing world. Our goal is to facilitate learning and empower these marginalized members of society to create a training program that tailors education in social and occupational skills to the end-user. The platform helps build trusting relationships and supportive communities that facilitate this knowledge transfer. Our app's algorithm intends to match autistic individuals to volunteers who serve as coaches in three specific realms: employment, social interaction, and communication skills.

In the USA alone, there are 50,000 autistic young adults that enter the workforce, yet 85% of this talent pool is unemployed/underemployed due to the inaccessibility for these individuals to independently navigate through the job finding process. It is difficult for individuals with autism to find jobs that match their skills, and then fully prepare for the interview process with no individualized assistance from experts or coaches who have domain specific knowledge. In a CNN article Becky Ketts says “Even the thought of interviewing for a job can be overwhelming for someone on the autism spectrum. That alone keeps individuals from finding jobs.” If these individuals do find a job, the biggest problem is that the job interview process is focused on socialization and communication skills, putting many adults with autism at a disadvantage as they often have trouble understanding the nuances of questions.” Hence, it is important that employers are more welcoming to, and understanding of, applicants with autism. By giving someone with autism a chance to work, many employers discover that those on the spectrum have their own unique strengths. These skills range from working with numbers, computers and spreadsheets to solving complex challenges through visual thinking tactics.

There are over 131 million people worldwide with ASD who are left without a unified voice -- and diagnoses are becoming more common, increasing nearly 425% since 2000 in the USA. Globally, access to services and support for people with ASD remains inadequate, especially for those who’ve outgrown educational systems. Neglecting the needs of this population leads to underemployment or worse, no-attention as care becomes unaffordable. 

Hence, the populations whose lives we intend to directly improve are:

1. Autistic Individuals with the capability to participate meaningfully in the workforce

2. Parents who worry about their child’s ability to support living independently after outgrowing traditional educational systems

3. Volunteers/Caregivers - trained professionals or supportive aides 

4. Companies- There is a huge gap in the job market as it fails to leverage the strengths of autistics and connect them with employers, who stand to benefit financially even after the cost of accommodations is considered

By teaming up with Autism Self-Advocacy Atlanta, Atlanta Autism Consortium, Georgia Tech’s Excel program and working with hiring programs at companies like Microsoft and Accenture, we have involved our target users since day one in the ideation process of this very proposal - highlighting both their pain points and intellectual abilities.

The AxisAbility software matches individuals with autism to domain-specific volunteers to facilitate individualized training in specific areas for growth. The algorithm matches mentors to mentees by identifying complementary skill sets, personal goals, teaching styles and characteristics of diagnosis. Employing artificial intelligence, our platform learns from the volunteer and mentee to automate the matching process, finding mutually beneficial partnerships based on the data we gather. Once the mentors select their mentees, the app-curated activity instructions guide both partners through a step-by-step process to find meaningful employment by prompting conversations around workplace demeanor, interview behavior, fundamental soft-skills, and actionable steps towards writing a resume, discovering positions, and showcasing their strengths in an interview.

This lowers the barriers for individuals with autism to enter the workforce by allowing them to overcome their communicative setbacks and express their innate strengths to employers who stand to benefit from their unique abilities. This allows individuals with autism to:

1. Augment their productivity

2. Excel their ability to communicate meaningfully

3. Identify relevant and meaningful career prospects

4. Integrate fluidly into the workforce

Our app tracks improvements in interactive, cognitive, and behavioral function through a gamified review system that makes it easy for coaches to monitor the individuals’ progress. We draw insight from the UCLA-based “PEERS” curriculum for youth social skills training to generate our individualized training programs, allowing for us to maximize the value added by connecting buddies through our platform. This strong evidence-based methodology assists individuals with autism through the process of finding their weaknesses, strengths, and specific domains to integrate successfully into society. By building trusting, respectful relationships through effective communication and guidance, volunteers can best to engage with their mentee.

In the long-term, our goal with this platform is to create a collaborative ecosystem that acts as a recruiting pipeline for this unique talent pool. We hope to centralize the online community and levage user data to provide customized educational programs in skill sets ranging from social skills to STEM topics, also focusing on diet and exercise. In an increasingly-inclusive business world, we imagine our platform to become a recruiting pipeline for the workforce of the future.