The project “Disabled + Self Employed“ (DSE) will provide adult education for people with disabilities and will support them to start, build and develop their own business. The goal is to equip institutions for disabled people and institutions for entrepreneurship to support people with disabilities on their way to occupational independence with a new approach. A recent statistics from Eurostat showed the big difference between the employment situation of people with and people without disabilities. This is above all not only due to the high unemployment rate in European countries in general, but also because employers still have many prejudices against hiring people with disabilities. In order to improve this situation for people with disabilities DSE wants to utilize their different potentials and bring them into the job market by being self-employed.Our project DSE will address this challenge by producing four different intellectual outputs during the project.The first one will be a guidebook including best practices examples of the partner organizations with instructions for transfer and adaptation, plus all results of the following three IOs.As second intellectual output we will develop a barrier-free e-learning tool tailored for the special starting positions of the different types of our indirect target group. For instance, the software and the content for deaf users is created in sign language, for blind users it is screen-reader compatible, and for learning-disabled users it is expressed in easy language.The third intellectual output will be tested and implemented tutorials which will also be targeted for people with special needs. They will provide the disabled with more and better knowledge of support services and deeper business knowledge concerning different subjects such as accounting and finances, distribution and sales, IT and more.The method used in developing the curricula as part of the guide book and the e-learning-software will be involving the future users in the development process right from the beginning since people with disabilities are experts in their own right.Although there are countless networks to exchange information, share learning, give and receive assistance, until now there are no networks that cope with the specific demands of handicapped self-employed people which connect institutions for people with disabilities with start-up initiatives. Therefore we will set up virtual communities in each partner country as our fourth IO, the communication and exchange will be carried out in the respective national language.These communities will be supposed to continue and record future developments and application of DSE even after the expiration of the project and guarantee the requested sustainability.All partners of DSE have experiences in cooperating with disabled persons and in improving their situation of employment and they have established long term collaborations with advocacy groups and societies that support people with disabilities.
The project Disabled + Self-Employed (DSE) was developed and implemented together with the partners Opera / Italy, FAMDIF / Spain, Elephant / Netherlands and Naviculam (formerly BOIE) / Poland, coordinated by a German partner KOPF, HAND + FUSS. The aim of the project is to give people with disabilities better opportunities to become self-employed. In the participating countries, start-up counselling is a widespread service. Unfortunately, only a few counselling institutions are aware of the special circumstances and needs of people with disabilities. In some cities, such as Berlin (enterability) or Murcia (FAMDIF), there are special contact points that specialize in advising founders with disabilities. However, founders in rural areas, but also in Munich or Palermo, do not have these possibilities. On the largest eLearning platform, YouTube, there is a wide range of information on setting up your own business. However, if this information is required via screenreader, sign language or easy language, no digital information is available. With the DSE project we wanted to close these gaps and achieve the following goals: With the direct target group: - We wanted to inform start-up consultants how they can accompany and support people with disabilities in the start-up consultation. - We wanted to inform institutions that were committed to the interests of people with disabilities about entrepreneurship. With the indirect target group: - We wanted to make it possible for people with disabilities to obtain digital information about entrepreneurship at any time and any place. In order to achieve these goals, we have developed the following products as part of DSE: 1st Guidebook with information about a. The work-specific starting positions of people with disabilities in the respective countries, b. Best practices from the countries to enable people with disabilities to access self-employment, c. The development of a barrier-free eLearning tool d. The tutorials created e. And information about the development of country-specific virtual communities to enable the exchange of target groups (direct as well as indirect). 2. The barrier-free eLearning tool called LAYA (acronym for Learn As You Are). This tool is an eLearning platform specially developed by KOPF, HAND + FUSS in cooperation with Humboldt-Universität, so that people with special access to learning (easy language, sign language, etc.) can also deal digitally with start-up information. 3. the tutorials inform about different founding topics. The contents are a. Long-term support b. Accounting and finance c. Marketing and sales d. Public relations e. IT The tutorials each have a length of 4 to 13 minutes. They are available in different languages as well as in Easy Language and Sign Language. 4. building a virtual community so that the target groups can do better networking with each other and exchange information. The results from 1 to 3 are a complete success. The long version of Chapter 1 of the Guidebook is very informative. It shows a comparative analysis of the work situations of people with disabilities in the participating countries and how differently the countries support this target group. The best practices are also interesting and informative. The LAYA learning platform, which is available as an open source product, is not only important for DSE, but is also in demand for other projects. For example, KickIn showed interest in it - a project sponsored by the DFB to spread inclusion in the professional football field. LAYA is also used in the BMBF project "WayIn" (information for employers to employ people with disabilities) and further areas of application will surely be added. The tutorials on the various topics are very appealing, informative and entertaining, so that people without disabilities can also take a look at them. Based on the number of hits we can see that people are watching them. However, since the videos are accessed anonymously, we cannot analyze the group of users. Unfortunately, we were not successful in setting up the virtual community. We purchased and implemented an extra tool (Ning) and found that the target groups were not enthusiastic about joining another community (alongside Facebook, etc.). Instead, we focused on building a Facebook group. Right from the start and during the whole project people with disabilities were involved and advised us on the development of the products (togetherness instead of forgetherness).