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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
284-11-04-16 – AT Assessment Part 2 – Employment with Josh Anderson
Josh Anderson, Manager, Clinical Assistive Technology, Easter Seals Crossroads | www.EasterSealsTech.com
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JOSH ANDERSON: Hello, this is Josh Anderson, Manager of Clinical Assistive Technology Services at Easter Seals crossroads, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 284 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on November 4, 2016.
Today we have part two of our three-part series on assistive technology assessment. Joining me today is Josh Anderson who is the manager of clinical assistive technology right here at Easter Seals crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. He’s going to spend some time with us talking about the AT assessment process in the area of job accommodation or workplace.
Next week join us for our final installment where we talk about AT assessment in the K-12 educational environment.
We hope you’ll check out our website at www.eastersealstech.com, sent us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project, or call our listener line at 317-721-7124.
I’m excited about today’s interview. This is part two of our three-part series on assistive technology assessment. I’m excited for a couple of reasons. One, of all the areas of assistive technology, employment is where I sort of started and got my professional skills and experience, and I’m also getting to interview one of my good friends and coworkers Josh Anderson, who is the manager of our clinical assistive technology program. Plus, he is in studio which is always fun. Josh, how are you?
JOSH ANDERSON: I’m doing good. How are you today?
WADE WINGLER: I’m doing well. I’m excited about our chat. You and I do this on a pretty regular basis and one of our other shows, but are listening to the show and aren’t aware of ATFAQ, assistive technology frequently asked questions, that’s a place where they if they like your voice – and you have a great radio voice – they can hear you every other week on ATFAQ which is a lot of fun as well.
JOSH ANDERSON: It definitely is. They should definitely tune in.
WADE WINGLER: We’re going to talk today about the assistive technology assessment process. Again, this is part two of a three-part series where we talk about AT assessment and independent living and employment and education. We are going to pick your brain a little bit about what an AT assessment looks like when we’re talking about job accommodation, employment kind of stuff. Before we jump into that, for the folks in the audience who don’t know you from the other show, tell me a little bit about yourself, your professional background, and how you got to the point where you are in the studio with expertise about AT and job accommodation.
JOSH ANDERSON: Expertise — that’s a very big word. We are going to keep that in a gray area for today. Kind of how I ended up here, for the longest time I had what one of my colleagues Craig Burns refers to as job attention deficit disorder, kind of looking around trying to figure out exactly where I fit in so I work a lot of different jobs. Eventually everything led me here to Easter Seals crossroads and I started here as a job coach and our implement division. I worked with the folks with disabilities trying to help them find jobs, get interview skills, do all those kinds of things. In doing that I started working with assistive technology a lot. We still do work at the department here. When an opening became available in assistive technology, I moved over here and never really looked back. It’s been great.
WADE WINGLER: I remember that process of interviewing and trying to decide this is I have what it takes to do assistive technology. It turns out that’s been a few years and since you’ve moved from being a job coach and doing employment and job placement specifically, you’ve had a couple of different roles in our assistive technology program. Can you talk about that a little bit?
JOSH ANDERSON: I started off the same way everyone who comes into our program does, which is as a technician. As a technician, you really just start learning about assistive technology, what it is, how it helps, and you start to learn how to use those programs on your own. Once you get to a certain point, when everyone feels comfortable, you can actually start training individuals on how to use that equipment. You keep going, go through a process we call core competencies, we just have to prove that you know how to use the equipment, how to assess individuals. Basically it’s a lot of following around with different specialists and how they work, coming up with your own way of doing it. Once you go through all those, you become an AT specialists. That’s when you start doing evaluations, going out and meeting with individuals, making recommendations, continuing training. From there I moved into a coordinator position where I still did the assessments, trainings, but also started handling the referrals from our referral sources, making sure those were to the correct person, that I forgot seen and taking care of, and then most recently moved into the manager of the clinical services which is still doing all those other things plus a few more things on top including sitting here in talking with you, which is kind of nice.
WADE WINGLER: We refer to you as a working manager which always cracks me up, because that insinuates the other managers might not be working. What we mean by that is you still see folks. You have a case load, you are actively working in the trenches doing job accommodation and other assistive technology in addition to supervising the entire program.
JOSH ANDERSON: Which works really well because of nice to stay in the trenches so I know what’s going on. I can see things when I’m looking at other folks reports and things like that, I can actually know what this equipment is and see how it can help. Plus it gets me out of the office sometimes, which is nice, getting to see folks and get out and run with them.
WADE WINGLER: I’m jealous of that part. I may go with you sometime.
JOSH ANDERSON: That’s perfectly fine.
WADE WINGLER: Obviously we talked about some of the internal training that happens here to make sure folks know what they are doing as we put them in front of people to do assistive technology. Talk to me a little bit about degrees, credentials, certifications. What kinds of things – for yourself, but what do you think it’s important for someone who is going to do AT evaluations in terms of degree, credentials, those kinds of things.
JOSH ANDERSON: A degree could be just about anywhere. There are a lot of different rehab sciences, occupational therapy, all kinds of things that could help you. One thing that I have that I know Wade possesses as well and we tried to get a lot of our staff to get is the ATP, the assistive technology professional certification.
WADE WINGLER: From RESNA.
JOSH ANDERSON: From RESNA. That goes through them and it teaches you a lot of best practices, everything from seating and positioning to the entire accommodation process, training. It’s very in-depth but it’s a great certification to have an really proves that folks know what they are doing. As far as other certifications, we have on our team folks who are certified ergonomic assessment specialist Scott certified brain injury specialist, certified autism specialist. There are so many different avenues to go. Having members of a team with all those different certifications is great for me because I can pick their brains if it’s something I’m not completely skilled with.
As far as degree, I think everyone here that has one, it’s a different thing. Mine is Bachelors of Public Affairs and Management. I’m the one who has to go to talk to everybody. I guess that helps. We have someone with a Masters of Kinesiology. All different kinds of degrees all across the board. One thing really is being able to have the people skills to be able to go out, because you are one-on-one with folks. Just being able to have the people skills to talk to them. And those problem-solving skills, which you really get from any kind of college academic training, is to have those problem-solving skills. In assessments that is what you are doing. You are presented with a problem and you come up with a way to fix it.
WADE WINGLER: As I look at the program that we have here, and as I think about AT assessment in general, we are representing a lot of diversity in terms of academics and also personal diversity in terms of the kinds of folks we have here. I think that all lends itself to being good at assistive technology. You have to be thinking on your feet. You have to constantly be reeducating and reconsidering what is appropriate and what’s not in terms of technical solutions. I’m proud of the diversity on your team and think that’s an important part of how it works.
JOSH ANDERSON: You don’t get pigeonholed into always coming up with the same ideas because you have a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds, varying experiences, expertise. So when you sit there and bounce ideas off each other, you’re always coming up with things you didn’t think of on your own. It really helps.
WADE WINGLER: Absolutely. Let’s dive into assistive technology assessments a little bit specifically. As you think about doing an assessment for assistive technology and an employment or workplace setting, what are some of the most important components of an AT evaluation?
JOSH ANDERSON: Probably the most important component is first and foremost making sure that the consumer is involved in every step of the process. It is their assistive technology assessment. It’s going to be assisting them on the job. Other things is to keep everyone else involved as well, be at the funding source if they are coming through vocational rehabilitation, if we are contacted by the employer, if there is HR, management, all of them. Keeping everyone on the same page helps because you can cover all bases at once during that assessment. You really need to find out what tasks they need to do to be successful at the job. The main goal of that assessment is that the individual can do the job as well, if not better, than someone who doesn’t have an impairment or barrier. Just making sure that all those bases are covered. If they are on a computer, what programs are they going to have access, because they made need software but may not need to know how to use every bit of that software but they needed know how to use it to be successful in those programs. Are they going to have to move to different areas? Are they going to be stationary in one area? There are so many different things that go into it. I say the most important thing is communication with each person, each person involved to make sure that they know what’s going on and you can get all those bases covered in that one assessment.
WADE WINGLER: Brian Norton, the director of our program and our coworker, always says that when he looks at assistive technology and job accommodation, he always says it’s about three quarters communication and 25 percent technology.
JOSH ANDERSON: Yes. It really and truly is. The word technology sometimes, you start thinking of all these high-tech things. It might mean they need a little device to reach something. That’s the only accommodation that’s needed.
WADE WINGLER: They may not need a robot. Though it’s cool when they do.
JOSH ANDERSON: Although we really want them to get a self driving car and a robot, it might not be needed for the job.
WADE WINGLER: There you go. I want to go deeper into some of the things you talked about in terms of individuals roles. Talk to me a little bit about the consumer’s role and what their involvement should look like when we are talking about an AT assessment in a workplace setting.
JOSH ANDERSON: The consumer role is the most important, as I said, they are the one that’s going to be using the technology that needs to accomplish whatever they have to accomplish at that job in order to be successful. One thing that is really nice at crossroads and being able to do assessments through us as having a loan library with the editor program. We can borrow a lot of equipment and take it out to the consumer, get it in their hands, try it out to see if it’s going to meet their needs. We don’t want what they call technology abandonment. You end up getting some of the equipment, they don’t use it, it just sits there. Then someone spent money on something that doesn’t do anything and collects dust. God forbid the individual doesn’t end up being successful at the job and loses the position. There might be six or seven different items that might be able to help an individual. Being able to get their hands on those, see which ones work best, which ones they are more comfortable using, and really which ones they are most productive with can help you make those decisions. As we said, it’s not always the most expensive item. Sometimes it might be the least expensive item. Getting all those in their hands and making sure that they are involved in every step of the process, that they know what’s happening – there’s is nothing worse than ordering something off Amazon and not knowing when it’s coming. Now you get instant updates every single minute to know when it is – to let them know where the process is, where they are in the evaluation. They’ve had the meeting. Where are we at now? What are my combinations going to look like? All of those pieces so they are not left in the dark and are involved in the entire process.
WADE WINGLER: One of the things that brings to mind when you talk about those things is device abandonment is a big problem. You don’t want to do an evaluation in such a way that you end up with something gathering dust. Not only is it a waste of resources, but I always worry about it eroding the confidence of the people involved, the employer, or the consumer that’s going to use the technology. Do they want to be someone who believes that AT doesn’t work, because in my evaluation we pick something that doesn’t work?
JOSH ANDERSON: Exactly. If they see – especially if the employer happens to be the one paying for it – if they see that they did this, plus we get a decent amount of referrals where we’ve gone into businesses and perhaps on something for vocational rehabilitation or private pay individual that the business has seen how this individual used it, it has worked so well, so when the business hires someone else that maybe has an impairment or barrier, they contact us to come back and see how we can help that person. It’s all part of doing a good job in keeping best practice, but you’re making sure that everything that’s recommended is going to be used and help the individual to be successful.
WADE WINGLER: Thinking about the employer, with the employer’s role in this process? What should it be?
JOSH ANDERSON: Again with communication, I definitely making sure – I always like to tell a funny story with that, that a lot of times when I contact employers, they had no idea what assistive technology is. There’s been more than one time when I walked in and sat at a table, and across for me has been three lawyers, two union reps, and four people from the HR department. All I can say is you have no idea what I’m doing here. That’s not why I’m here. Know is in trouble. I’m here to help not to hinder, make this a bad thing. Just being able to communicate with them. Most employers are very accommodating and really love learning about it. Some of the things you implement for somebody who maybe has a barrier to employment might actually help every single person to have. Just because it helps someone with a visual impairment doesn’t mean a larger monitor isn’t going to make everyone on the sales for more productive. Again, Brian saying a third of it is all communication. I don’t like to walk into a business without them knowing I’m coming, because again they don’t know what it is. They are afraid is an ADA claim or something like that. It’s very important for them to know. Really for the employer part – and it’s not very hard – as them being honest about what it is this person needs to be successful. What are their job duties going to be? Sometimes that’s not the hire out manager; that’s the team lead on the sales for; that’s the person directly above them; that’s the people working next to them they can kind of see. Sometimes an assessment I’ve actually observed other people working in there just to see what they do every day and how they do it. Okay, if we implement this and this, it will help this individual as well.
WADE WINGLER: That makes sense. As we think about the process of a good assessment, we talked about some of the things that go into that. What should the outcome of a good assessment to be? Paperwork, processes, but when you did it right, what does it look like?
JOSH ANDERSON: The consumer is happy and productive and doing the job perfectly. That’s really it. That they can do it just as well, again if not better, than anyone else doing that job. Basically to where, if a manager, and HR person, it comes to race time and they are looking at everyone’s productivity, everyone’s output, everyone’s job, this individual does not stick out at all as having anything different as far as productivity wise, as far as job wise. Really just that the person is happy, is really enjoying the work, is independent, doesn’t have to rely on someone else to help them with the job and can do it just as easily as anyone else.
WADE WINGLER: I agree that that is a great outcome or end result. I want to dig a little bit deeper into the components of a good outcome. When you’ve done an assessment, there is a report. Not necessarily the sections of the report, but what kind of stuff is in that report that says here’s the roadmap for next steps. What kinds of things should be at the end of the assessment, the roadmap that carries people forward? What should be in that?
JOSH ANDERSON: Basically it starts with these other tasks the individual needs to do, these are the barriers to the tasks, and these are the pieces and parts that need to be put in place in order to help them solve those tasks. Along with that definitely justification for those pieces and parts, which hopefully make sure that you don’t have the technology abandonment because you’re not recommending things that are not needed. If you only need two or three things, well 30 might help but 27 of those are just going to end up sitting there and not being used in the long run. Writing a report and that kind of way helps the person doing the assessment, because then you are making sure you’re tying each part back together. You know you’re taking that task, that barrier, and the piece of technology that you’re going to implement and put them altogether.
The other part that’s very important as recommendations for training. The training on assistive technology varies so greatly just because the individuals we work with have different levels of experience with technology. A lot of folks we work with that are younger probably aren’t going to take as much training because they are going to pick up on a lot of things faster. They’ve probably been using tablet devices, cell phones, and computers since they could walk or maybe even before. Sometimes they are little bit quicker to pick up on things. It takes a little bit less time to train. Again, that’s a important part of that and something we try to do in the assessments. When we put the technology in the individuals hands for them to try out, we can get an idea about how long it might take to make sure they can be completely successful. With that training, it’s also very important to take into my that they are going to be learning a new job at the same time the cost of being able to balance those two so they can learn the new job as well as how to use the technology to be successful at the job. There’s a bit of a balancing acts in those things. As far as the roadmap, it starts with what the individual needs to do, what’s the problem, how do we fix it, and what pieces and parts do we put together to make that work.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. It’s interesting that our conversation so far could be applied to any kind of assistive technology and any kind of setting. We are talking about best practices over all. Give me a few examples of some of the most common kinds of AT you are recommending these days.
JOSH ANDERSON: That’s always a hard one. I always hate to say common kinds because one things with assessments you don’t want to do is get a toolkit in your head. The minute you do, you’re going to miss something, recommend something that has worked with 20 people that won’t work with this one. I would say one thing: a lot of the folks I work with are blind or low vision. Of course, different software if they are in an environment, be it something for magnification like a Zoom text or a program like that, or a screen reader for folks who are much lower vision or maybe completely blind like JAWS or that kind of program. Something I do see a lot of is magnification for folks who are low vision, just because even though we are getting more towards a digital society, away from paperwork, a lot of people still need print access. Read reports, read these kinds of things. Something that can magnify those, be it a large video magnifier with a camera and a large screen, a handheld one, or a lot of folks are moving to using their cell phones and tablet devices for those.
WADE WINGLER: Thinking about the process of AT assessment, tell me an example of a pitfall or something that can go wrong in the process of an assistive technology assessment in the workplace.
JOSH ANDERSON: One thing that can go is some of the folks we work with, different disabilities are degenerative, so those, the need can change in between the different parts. Some pieces of the assessment can take a decent amount of time. Occasionally just writing the report can take time because you might have to talk to two manufacturers about can this even be done, can this device be made, can it be altered to help this individual. During that time either A, the employer he gets tired of waiting in the job can be lost, or B, you can always have where the impairment can get worse and progress to the point where it’s no longer going to fit. And that, communication, I’ll go to back to that.
WADE WINGLER: I figured that was coming.
JOSH ANDERSON: Yeah. Communication breakdown is awful, when every player doesn’t know where we are and what’s happening. Again, the employer gets tired of waiting and try to move on. Some paperwork doesn’t get to where it needs to be. Also some items take a long time to get just because they are specialized, maybe even one-of-a-kind, so it can be a bit harder with that. Another thing is the person doing the assessment could just miss something. That does happen. I love to tell you that no one on my team has ever done that, but I would be lying to say I’ve never done that. Sometimes you get everything in place and you look at it into the training and everything, look down and say darn it, I totally missed this. How did I miss that?
WADE WINGLER: We are human.
JOSH ANDERSON: Exactly. It happens. As long as everything can progress in a timely manner and run kind of semi-smoothly along with communication, you don’t see too many pitfalls in that. On the other thing is, sometimes jobs can just go away. That’s a pitfall, that somebody can get hired on but who knows what happens with the business between now and then. When you are the newest person, low man on the totem pole, with or without a disability, sometimes you’re just the one that gets cut. That can happen as well.
WADE WINGLER: That kind of thing happens. We are running close on time but I have some questions I want to make sure that we get to hear. On the flip side of pitfalls, give me an example of when you found joy in assistive technology assessment or job accommodation situation.
JOSH ANDERSON: There have been so many. Without going into too much detail, an individual I worked with on his own coffee shop and ended up, by no fault of his own, his vision went from low to completely blind, couldn’t do it anymore. We put a lot of different things in place, most of them quite inexpensive. Going in there and being able to order a cup of coffee – I had my wife go with me so he would know it was me. Ordered a couple of different coffee drinks and watching them being able to do everything that he could do before, it’s cool. There is no other way to describe it than just plain cool. He’s just doing what he enjoys doing and what he could easily do before. Just by putting a two things, but most of it pretty and expensive and easy. He could tell when people came in the door, could easily bring up their order, could make everything, could find all of his stuff. Really any time you get to go back and see that person be successful.
Or I’ve had folks that I worked with that I’ve talked to a year or two down the road, even folks have worked with from an employment and assistive technology, who may be hired in at one level, and when you talk to them again they’ve moved up. You put all the stuff in place to help them out just to do the job and they actually ended up doing it so well that now they are the boss. Again, it’s a cool feeling to see and to know that you had a hand in helping someone be independent. It’s really nice.
WADE WINGLER: We’ve got less than a minute left in the interview, but I want to ask you. If you had to pick one piece of advice for someone who is new to the field or getting ready to be new to doing assessments, which that one piece of advice you would get a newbie?
JOSH ANDERSON: One piece of advice to give a newbie: just keep your eyes open. Don’t get caught into a rut of recommending the same things or even reading a piece of paperwork before you beat an individual and developing a picture in your mind. Once you get there, that person’s needs, abilities, are going to be completely different from anyone else you worked with. Even if you worked with two other people with the exact same impairment, every single one of them is different, their needs, abilities, all completely different. Treat everyone as an individual, every assessment as something brand-new, and will do a great job.
WADE WINGLER: That’s good, solid advice. If folks want to reach out to you, they want to connect with you in some way, what kind of contact information would you like to provide?
JOSH ANDERSON: They can always email me at janderson@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or they can call here at the link and ask for me. That’s 317-466-1000.
WADE WINGLER: Or we can also do toll-free, which is 888-466-1314.
JOSH ANDERSON: I didn’t bring a business card right in front of me so I unfortunately couldn’t remember that.
WADE WINGLER: Or they can also check you out on the other show, ATFAQ, so that ATFAQshow.com. That’ll take them to a page where they can you talk and answer questions every other week about assistive technology.
Josh Anderson is the Manager of Clinical Assistance Technology here at Easter Seals Crossroads, is one of the regulars on ATFAQ, and has been our guest here. Thank you so much.
JOSH ANDERSON: Thank you so much. Have a great day.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124, shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. Looking for a transcript or show notes from today’s show? Head on over to www.EasterSealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more shows like this plus much more over at AccessibilityChannel.com. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.
***Transcript provided by TJ Cortopassi. For transcription requests and inquiries, contact tjcortopassi@gmail.com***
