Erin Liebe
Employing Machine Learning to connect disabled people in Southeast Asia with international employment opportunities
November 19th, 2020
My research is an explanatory piece that explores the correlative relationship between barriers to education and employment opportunities for disabled people in Southeast Asia. People with disabilities are especially vulnerable in this area due to the prominence of gender inequality in education, lack of special education teachers, physical accessibility barriers to attending school, gap in the disabled population data, and economy being dominated by primary sector industries. I will explain how each of these unfreedoms strengthen each other, marginalizing the disabled population even more thhan their natural disabilities do. All of these inequalities lead to a paucity of job opportunities for disabled people in Southeast Asia. More than 90% of children with disabilities in this region have never attended school, keeping them from progressing academically and developing the skills that would make them employable (Sida). Furthermore, people with disabilities are typically great candidates for jobs in retail, customer service, and administrative support roles, however, these jobs fall into the tertiary sector of the economy, and Southeast Asia is dominated by agriculture, which is part of the primary sector of the economy. The agriculture industry is physically demanding, making it an innately discriminatory job sector to disaabled people.
Fortunately, in today’s age where internet accessibility is increasing and smart technology is becoming more prevalent in the home, disabled people can connect themselves with employers from all over the world. Computers, smartphones, and tablets allow disabled people to participate in distant economies that have jobs that are conducive to their special skill sets. I am proposing a machine learning application made specifically to connect these job-seeking disabled people with the candidate-seeking employers who hope to hire a disabled person due to economic incentives or out of sheer goodwill. The candidates would input their unique strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and interests into the job search tool and will then be matched with a list of potential jobs. The success and independence of a person with a disability is no longer dependent on the wokeness and inclusivity of their local community. Rather, they can instantly communicate with employers that can appreciate and utilize their abilities remotely while tolerating their disabilities, no matter where their education. This also combats the gap in the data on the disabled population in Souteast Asia by collecting temporal geospatial data on disabled people seeking employment and those that have gotten jobs through the app. A household survey would also help in gathering data on the educational opportunities and experiences of people with disabilities in Southeast Asia.