Creating New Jobs for Autistic People

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Hello everyone,

I just want to let everyone know about a new project we've started to create jobs for people on the autistic spectrum. It's little more than a month old and already doing very well. Traffic on the website has grown steadily, as have newsletter signups. People are contributing to our wiki and I'm answering email inquiries about the project just about daily.

Our site is http://www.autlabs.com

You can help by contributing to our wiki at http://autlabs.wikispaces.com or by spreading the word about the project via your blogs or any other autism-related forums.

Thus far we've been very successful getting people to blog about the project and that's how we've achieved very rapid growth in just the first month with no money, all just word-of-mouth promotion. A blog or a forum note may not seem like much, but the truth is that just a few words helps quite a lot. So if you have a blog or if you frequent any other autism-related sites, please do help pass this information along. :)

Thanks!

Isaac Dealey
Autelligent Laboratories

Very nice. Have you actually been able to place anyone in a job yet?

Not yet. It's coming, but we're only a few weeks old yet. So right now we're working mostly on raising awareness, establishing our "core values" (see the wiki), and discussing the business model. In the very near future we'll be establishing a board of directors for AutLabs specifically, and hopefully this will provide a model for other independent businesses as well.

This scheme in the UK might interest you:
http://www.nas.org.uk/prospects

Thanks Kangoogle. I've added them to our wiki as well. :)

My one concern about this is that it may very well be illegal to create a job posting that is ONLY for people with a specific disability. The scheme of your company is probably to contact employers to get them to close off certain job postings and reserve them for your autistic clients. But they might not be legally allowed to do that, at least not for PAID jobs.

They might have to open it up to the public first, and then the autistic people who are considering the job would have to apply on their own. They might get a bit of a leg-up due to EE, though (IF you've managed to convince them that having an ASD is not a violation of a Bona Fide Occupational Requirement).

There have been times where you can give certain disabled people "jobs" without having to open it to the public, but those are menial and un-paid (or below minimum wage). The precise kind of thing that your company is fighting against.

Your heart is in the right place, but I don't know how much luck you'll have with getting companies to hire specifically autistic people, especially for paid, non-menial work. Because disability work organizations still have that stigma of offering companies people who are un-employable. If they believe that people from disability agencies are un-employable, then why would they even consider giving them paid work?

Hell, many employers will have the nerve to portray themselves as a "good samaritan" company just for giving disabled people the privilege of working for them, for no (or very little) compensation. You would be asking them to take the person they hired for nothing to mop the floors for a month, and put him in an office with an actual salary. I know that some companies are willing to look past the "disability work agency" thing, but most aren't. In their minds, if these people you're offering are really any good, then they wouldn't need an organization like this, now would they?

As harsh as it sounds, sometimes the only way to guarantee that you WON'T be pushed around and given insulting jobs is to search for jobs as an independant agent, and ditch the disability agencies altogether.

Well that's not an issue in our case because Autelligent Laboratories isn't an agency, we're a software company. Check out the wiki and read the FAQ. The business model is loosely based on a Danish company called Specialisterne, who are also not an agency, but rather a software testing company who hire people with AS.

Not everyone with HFA/AS seems to be unemployable. I know i am still undiagnosed, but i have been working as a consultant (with varying results i may add), but when it have worked it worked well and i have been loved for my analytical skills and my ability to think in systems.

Also, when working with software development (testing in this case like he mentioned), you rarely have to go out and kiss CEO's in the "rear department" which means that you can be yourself and can concentrate on doing the job instead.

P.S: i cannot see how positive discrimination could be illegal.

If you made the software company freelance you could get around most of the legal regulations. As in people got paid for whatever software contributions they made. In fact a freelance software company might be an attractive business model for a potential investor.

It's slightly different in that case, but you would still have to check the laws in the area that you're operating on to see if hiring exclusively autistic people is legal. You COULD say that the positions are "Employment Equity prefered" (or whatever the term is where you are). That is not illegal. But to say that you only hire a certain sub-set of people from a protected category might be illegal.

For example, In Canada, employers are allowed to have a posting that reads "Aboriginal Tax Apprentice Program". They are not allowed to say "Cree Tax Apprentic Program". They are allowed to say "Visible Minority IT assistant", but not "Chinese IT assistant".

The only sure-fire way to not get sued would be to ensure that all people got a fair chance at being hired in your company.

Thanks Katie. :)

I'm sorry if my first response sounded like I didn't appreciate the feedback. I was in a bit of a hurry and have been fairly busy in general recently. I do appreciate the feedback - thanks for the info about how the Canadian laws work.

We anticipate potential challenges in organizational structure or recruiting that might be legally sensitive, and we assume they are solvable. The idea of a company designed to benefit a specific subset of the population isn't new. Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 1980 and MTV Networks established Logo in 2005. We suspect that the majority of the people working for either of these companies are black or members of the GLBT community respectively and the companies seem to do just fine legally.