ObjectiveEd has been awarded a grant from NIDLIRR (National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research) to build a system to teach pre-employment skills to students with vision impairments.

We are building an Interactive Fiction game to teach critical skills such as problem solving, self-advocacy, using transportation and appropriate workplace behavior. An Interaction Fiction game is a “choose-your-own-adventure” where at each step of the game, the teen must decide amongst several choices on how to respond to each situation, as the story progresses. The multi-chapter audio story starts with the BVI teen finding about an opportunity to get a job, and goes through the steps of arranging a job interview, preparing for the interview, having an in-person interview, and succeeding on their first day at the job.

As part of the grant, we are researching how effectively this audio adventure game will help teen students practice and master their pre-employment transition skills. We are working with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and The Carroll Center for the Blind, outside of Boston. The AFB is coordinating the research, and the system will be tested by teens from the Carroll Center. Not only will the teen be able to practice their skills as they play the game, but their teacher can view their progress in acquiring key skills on the ObjectiveEd web-dashboard.

We’ve assembled a great team to create this amazing system. In addition to ObjectiveEd’s Software Engineers, Product Managers, and Interactive Fiction Writers, our team includes Dr. Karla Antonelli, (Research Scientist at National Research & Training Center on Blindness & Low Vision at Mississippi State University), Kim Charlson (Director of the Library at the Perkins School), Brian Charlson (former Director of Technology at the Carroll Center) and Ashley Colburn (Vision Rehabilitation Therapist at the Carroll Center).

If you have any questions, you can contact us at info@objectiveEd.com