Interview
Interview simulation to help people with visual disabilities — SenseTech Solutions Inc.
MaRS and CIBC Inclusive Design Challenge 2021 Winner
Organization:
SenseTech Solutions Inc
Website:
Your name?
Ali Raza Syed
Your role at the organization?
CTO
Let’s hear your origin story! How did you get into this work?
SenseTech Solutions started as an engineering capstone team at York University, Canada. We were interested in applying our technical skills and interests to underserved communities, such as persons with sight loss.
We were given the opportunity to work with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) on our capstone project. We learned greatly from working with the sight loss community and found that our solution could have a great everlasting impact for society.
From this experience we felt that we were bound to continue our work as a company, and set off to the beginning of our journey to apply technology solutions to help the lives of persons who live with disabilities.
What does your organization do? What makes this important?
SenseTech Solutions is a software company that specializes in the design and development of accessible simulation technology. We utilize technologies such as virtual reality, machine learning and authoring systems to solve real world problems.
Our solutions allow people to readily access accessible experiences that promote learning, rehabilitation or training. We give access to simulations that emulate real world experiences for the purpose of enhancing confidence and independence.
Our team is passionate, and has worked hard in the past years to create a core foundation of accessible simulation material with accessibility experts, and people with lived experience. We believe this continued approach of designing with people of disabilities is the main ingredient of providing powerful, and inclusive solutions to all users.
How does your organization support inclusive and accessible hiring for people with disabilities?
One of our primary products; VRAI OP is an authorable interview simulation. VRAI OP originated from a problem statement that was put forward by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), which informed that the unemployment rate was significantly higher for people with vision loss than those without.
VRAI OP’s purpose is to help solve this problem by allowing anyone to practice interviews in a simulated environment.
A contributor to this discrepancy is that persons with visual disabilities lack experience with interviews and are in need of interview training to better prepare for them in job searching. VRAI OP’s purpose is to help solve this problem by allowing anyone to practice interviews in a simulated environment and then provide them with their interview performance/ results.
This technology can benefit other disability groups as well. For example, many research studies found that people who live with autism can have better interview performance when engaging with a digital character than a real person. VRAI OP will allow organizations to readily author interviews that are inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities.
What keeps you going (other than coffee)? What are you most proud of so far?
The fact that our products are making a positive difference in the world for everyday people. We also love working with various accessibility groups during the design process of our products, and seeing how their needs are fulfilled in the products we make.
You were one of the winners of the MaRS and CIBC Inclusive Design Challenge! How will this win help you build on your mission?
MaRS and CIBC selecting us as one of the winners for the inclusive design challenge will allow SenseTech Solutions to further enhance our solution into a fully authorable platform that can be used by any organization and users. Having the backing of MaRS and CIBC will allow other businesses to engage with SenseTech Solutions and utilize VRAI OP in their employment process with greater trust.
What’s the best way for people to support you?
SenseTech Solutions takes pride in making our technology accessible and we do that by working with end users and many groups and organizations. That said, SenseTech Solutions is always looking into ways to connect even more with various disability serving organizations.
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