Pre-Employment Program Specialist
40 hours/week
Partners for Youth with Disabilities (PYD) works to create a world where young people with disabilities will be able to live with dignity and pride in who they are, and to lead self-determined lives filled with purpose. To make this happen, we build the skills and abilities of young people with disabilities, and increase the inclusivity of workplaces, organizations, and communities.
For over 25 years, PYD has offered the Career Readiness Program, a program for youth with disabilities that addresses barriers to employment, graduation, and academic success in meaningful and measurable ways. PYD’s Career Readiness Program partners with Boston Public Schools (BPS), state rehabilitation agencies, Greater Boston Area high schools, and community partners to serve students through classroom learning, real-world experiences, internships, and professional mentoring. This includes a collaboration with the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC) to deliver Pre-Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS) for students with disabilities (ages 14-their 22nd birthday). The Pre-Employment program provides the five required Pre-ETS services including: work-based learning experiences, job exploration counseling, workplace readiness training, self-advocacy/peer mentoring, and counseling on post-secondary education or training programs.
PYD’s headquarters is located in Somerville, MA. The organization currently is working remotely and will continue to adapt work routines as warranted by the COVID-19 situation and the organization’s needs.
Key duties of the Pre-Employment Program Specialist include, but are not limited to:
• Provide classroom instruction and support to students during Pre-Employment Program sessions taking place in schools, various community locations, or virtually.
• Differentiate curriculum, incorporating Universal Design for Learning guidelines, as needed for participants based on tier/skill level.
• Provide one to one instruction for students needing additional supports to access the curriculum.
• Collaborate with team members to determine real world experiences best suited for cohort of students.
• Lead one day community based real-world experiences with employer, community, or education partners.
• Conduct student intakes and assist with program outreach and enrollment collaborating with Program Manager.
• Maintain accurate record of work including weekly case notes and attendance records using data management systems.
• Assist with program data collection and evaluation.
• Complete required reporting for MRC including individual participant reports.
• Collaborate with Outreach Coordinator to ensure successful onboarding process for student internships.
2 Effective June 2021
• Provide support to students participating in internship experiences, including weekly in-person or virtual check-ins with each intern and internship site supervisors.
• Review interns’ goals and discuss internship expectations and responsibilities.
• Attend bi-weekly PYD staff meetings.
• Attend team meetings and supervision.
• Assist with Career Readiness and agency wide special projects as they occur.
Supervision: This position reports to the Career Readiness Program Manager.
Qualifications:
• BA/BS and 2-3 years work experience in the education and/or disability field.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Experience with and passion for working with youth with disabilities.
• Detail-oriented.
• Ability to effectively manage time and meet competing demands.
• Ability to think outside of the box.
• Flexibility and a good sense of humor.
• Must be able to independently navigate to community partner locations throughout the Greater Boston area (e.g. MRC area offices, schools, employer partners, class locations).
• Available to possibly run programming on weekends of evenings.
• Bilingual skill in ASL, Spanish, Haitian Creole or Mandarin desired.
Diversity & Inclusion:
We encourage people with disabilities, BIPOC (black and/or indigenous people and people of color), multi-lingual speakers, people of any religion or ethnicity, and ASL speakers, of all gender identities and socio-economic backgrounds to apply.
Salary range: $38,500 – $41,000
Benefits:
PYD provides employees with the following benefits package:
• Health insurance with a generous employer contribution (Tufts Health Plan; Silver and Gold tier plan options)
• Employer-paid life and AD&D insurance
• Employer paid short term and long term disability insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan with 3% employer contribution
• Paid vacation time, starting at 3 weeks (15 days) per year
• Paid sick time, 12 days per year
• Paid holidays, 14 days per year
• Personal time, 3 days per year
• Flexible work scheduling, depending on position
• Free parking on site
• Supportive staff culture committed to providing our employees with the support & accommodations they need to be successful
3 Effective June 2021
To apply: Please send a resume and cover letter to Rebecca Cronin at rcronin@pyd.org
The filling of this position is dependent on PYD’s receiving a state-funded contract. Hiring and the length of the term of engagement will be contingent on the agency receiving the expected funding.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to