The National Federation of the Blind recently received a grant to provide a free nation wide job finding service called "America's Jobline" for one year starting July 1, 2001. This service is primarily designed to help people who are blind find paying jobs but it may be used by anyone with a touch tone telephone by dialing 1-800-414-5748 (not available until after July 1). The Federal Department of Labor has a computerized database of every job opening in the US and callers can search, day or night, 7 days a week, for jobs in their specialty and in a location near where they live or as far away as they are willing to travel. There is a menu of commands that direct the caller how to proceed. There is also a number to call for additional help. Callers can create and save a personal profile of jobs they are seeking in a certain area.
How Does "America's Jobline" Work? For the user (normally someone who is looking for employment), "America's Jobline":
- is instantly available on the telephone 24 hours a day to provide all job announcements in a high-quality synthetic speech format instead of printed text;
- provides all callers with the ability to search America's Job Bank or a comparable statewide job order database;
- allows job seekers to create and store on the system personal job search profiles for use in quickly locating vacancies for which they are qualified; and
- allows users the option to retrieve only the new and relevant job listings posted since the last call or retrieve previously stored announcements.
With "America's Jobline," the user enters a search profile into the system using the standard touch tone telephone keypad to respond to menu choices. As with the job announcement information, the menu choices are presented in a voice-output format.
Whom Does "America's Jobline" Help?
- persons who do not have or cannot use standard computers, who now have a convenient and easy-to-use access alternative to job information; and
- persons who cannot see or cannot read standard video display terminals, who now have audible access.
National surveys have estimated the unemployment rate for persons with disabilities to be as high as seventy percent. While access to job information by computer is now becoming commonplace in schools connected to the Internet, Job Service offices, professional and vocational preparation and training programs, and the growing number of one stop employment and training service centers sponsored by the United States Department of Labor, persons who have difficulty using it-whether from disability or other causes-are in danger of being left behind. Accordingly, persons who are blind, individuals with significant visual impairments or dyslexia, and those unable to travel to job service centers will certainly benefit greatly from "America's Jobline," which can give them an effective means of obtaining 24-hour a day access to the same job listings that can be seen on computer screens.
Implementation Plans: "America's Jobline" can be made available in any state or local area under a cooperative agreement between the National Federation of the Blind and a sponsoring agency. "America's Jobline" takes advantage of the Federation's experience in creating and building the text to speech conversion technology and mass distribution network as used for other programs. "America's Jobline" operates in collaboration with the United States Department of Labor, state job service agencies, and America's Job Bank on the Internet. Using the Internet for the high speed transfer of computer files, the "America's Jobline" command center obtains job orders that will be updated daily. The files are then processed and made available for distribution in the full word to speech format.
For more information, contact the National Federation of the Blind at:
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
Tel: (410) 659-9314
web: http://www.nfb.org
Address questions and comments to:
Carol Nadeau
c/o the Governor's Commission on Disability
57 Regional Drive
Concord, NH 03301
Tel: 271-6895 or 1-800-852-3405 toll free in New Hampshire (Voice or TTY
e-mail: cnadeau@gov.state.nh.us