TAD Projects
Update July 1999
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TAD ProjectsUpdate July 1999
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Presented at the Transnational Meeting in Cagliari, Sardinia, 26th & 27th July 1999
Presented by Carmen Viorreta
Under the first stage of the project 20 trainees now have received training and have established equipment at home for teleworking, this stage also identified the areas of activities that related to telework.
Initial issues where those encountered in Canaria, those of lower educational backgrounds when compared to non-disabled people. This was further underlined by the need for entrepreneurship within telework and the assumption of high qualification and business skills.
Through this targeted training around telework, not only the 'tools' but the psychological skills to support self-employment, was provided. It has to be recognised that teleworking models are quite different from the traditional methods of working.
By providing simulated 'business' training the project was able to identify skill gaps, in that although they had the telework skills there was relatively little 'work' experience.
The market sector to which telework skills can be applied has been identified, now there is need to provide further specialised training, for instance, web page design.
Also there is a need to develop and define protocols for telework and disabilities, which also covers the protocols for geographically dispersed workers.
The Telecentre provides the required 'teletools':
Technical support is provided through remote access, this has proved invaluable with the 'teleworkers' being dispersed throughout Spain. The equipment warrantee has covered other technical problems but there is concern about the technical support once these warrantees have ended.
At the end of the project there will be a 'self-employed' group which will develop into a 'company'.
Currently the project is providing two weeks face-to-face training to this group which will be expanded up to 8 weeks in total (the total may in fact longer or shorter depending upon the individual training needs).
The most important factor to come out of this training so far has been in the self-motivation and psychological areas. During the initial training programmes the self-motivation was high but after the programmes had finished this factor quickly dropped.
Within the training environment confidence levels are high but beneficiaries seem to lack the confidence to tackle problems in a non-training environment.
At the moment 45% of the group has some form of work activity with companies but not in a true telework area. This distinction has been made through the following factors:
In terms of future activities and work contracts the project will be producing a marketing brochure for the group to promote their skills etc., to small firms.
There are some barriers to the idea of telework in Spain, which may affect the ability for the group to obtain working contracts, in that few companies are currently taking on board the idea of telework.
Presented by Mr. Alfio Desogus
The 17 beneficiaries have now completed 850 hours of training, with practical training underway including the use of the Internet, for example, participants had visited the Toucan site and used it with ease. Others are working on graphical information production involving the creation of web sites, using and generating CD-ROM resources. At the end of the training course all trainees will receive certificates outlining the training they have undergone including the use of the Internet.
September would see the Co-operatives being constituted and linking up with partners to provide printing resources, under present law 9 people can legally constitute a co-operative. The focus of activities is around electronic printing and we are currently assessing the market situation and other companies. Research results will be presented at a regional level and one use of the Internet may well be the electronic production of the directory of companies and their services.
The Co-operative is also working on the electronic production of a cultural, historical and monument guides through telework. The aim is to 'showcase' the outputs at the end of November.
New legislation was passed at the end of March, a guarantee of "Access to Work", giving support to firms hiring disabled people, companies with more than 15 employees have to employ 1 disabled person for every 15 employees.
Out of an Island population of some 1.6 million there were 326,000 unemployed, there are no figures for disabled people, although the real unemployment figure is around 20%. The high rate is due in part to the problems within the chemical industries and that Sardinia's economy has traditionally been based on large/heavy industries.
The breakdown of the size of companies within Sardinia is as follows, approximately:
Under present legislation banks and public authorities follow different legislation, although some banks are under public authority control., the banking system is now nearly fully privatised.
Presented by Alex McDonald
Training programme
The project is now providing training to 10 disabled groups & users in the use of the Internet and video-conferencing etc. Training with other groups are already planned as well as the Level 2 of the 'Certificate in Telematics' for the Information Workers from disability advice organisations. During the first year activities it was recognised that there was a need to provide 'on-site' support within the organisations, including web page design, email groups and the development of databases, over and above the present training programmes.
Information Service
The project web site has been restructured to place a higher profile on the Information Service, and an improved navigation structure. Details of the project's activities, objectives etc., are still available through the site. (http://www.on-line.org.uk/)
The site will be regularly checked to ensure it s compliance with the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines and Bobby, as well as updating new and old links. Any comments the partners may have about the site, it's navigation etc., are welcome, especially feedback on access issues.
Accessibility Guidelines
We are currently working on expanding the present guidelines and developing a third document. The aim is for these documents to form the basis of approved 'standards', although it must be stressed that they are only the starting points not the end points. These guidelines, it is hoped, will be adopted by the Manchester Telematics partnerships, as well as becoming part of the criteria for funded projects through the Manchester City Councils European funded projects. The adoption by one 'external' organisation will make it easier to demonstrate to other bodies that access can be easily improved and the way is which the issue can be built into activities.
The guidelines will cover the following areas:
The expanded draft documents will be availble through the project's web site shortly, the original documents are currently available.
Presented by Jorge Artiles
The project started-up approximately 40 days ago with 20 physically disabled beneficiaries. A training workshop has been established in the rural highlands with the remit of training under telematics and their use of ICTs. There have been difficulties in setting the start date for the project through the lack of information and access to the disabled people in the rural highlands, in fact this problem existing in the urban areas as well.
Originally the training in ICT skills was to end on January 2000 but because of the late start-up and traditional breaks for holidays, we will have to extend the training further into next year. The extension is required if the project is to provide the appropriate training to enable the trainees to be ready for work within companies.
In October it is expected that the project will be able to present information regarding the labour marker situation and further details of the training programme.
The labour market in Canaria is predominately made up from small firms with less than 10 workers, statistics demonstrate that 95% of all firms are of this size. Rather than specialist skills the companies want workers with multiple skills, more a combination of communications and marketing (teleformatics). With this in mind the project is aiming to up-skill disabled workers rather than just train them as teleworkers.
The initial contacts with the beneficiaries demonstrated that their previous educational training had been lower than expected. In order to provide ICT training, a pre-training programme in basic skills has been provided. It is anticipated that the first training programmes will be finished by the end of September.
Currently we are building the profiles of the beneficiaries including sociological and educational factors that are to be used to develop the second stage of the training programme. Within this planning the expectations of the beneficiaries will be included to provide personalised training programmes.
Within the training there is special emphasis on a number of areas: social skills, communication, relationship, team work, self-esteem, confidence etc. In addition the beneficiaries are mixing in different group activities, for example, the access group.
The project is also providing employment advice (similar to the organisation Workable! in the UK) and we have found that we are working with highly motivated people, in part because they feel that they have never had the possibility to train and work before. On of the outputs is to provide guidelines on improving access to training and advice for disabled people in the Canaries.
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