The recent lockdown due to the COVID pandemic has highlighted our reliance on virtual means for staying in touch, continue learning and also working. Critically, it has also thrown into sharp definition the issues of digital exclusion and the lack of digital readiness for educators. This has been a specially challenging situation for the population who lack basic digital skills like the people with mental health challenges, cognitive disorders or/and especial learning needs, and thus, for the professionals targeting them.Distance learning massively activated during this Covid-19 crisis revealed the limited autonomy of people with disabilities, in particular with intellectual, learning and /or psychiatric disabilities, in the use of available technologies. This situation increased the inequality in the access to the training proposals and the marginalization and isolation of those groups, with heavy repercussions on their well-being and in their possibility of playing an active role in society, because also their distance to the labour market is getting increased.Statistics show that people with disabilities are more exposed than others to unemployment and social exclusion. It is proben that labour market inclusion has a positive impact on social inclusion and that by including people with disabilities, companies, individuals and society at large all win. The role of Job Coaches has become key to support the job inclusion of this vulnerable groups. Job coaches have the task of accompanying the client in job search and in the subsequent reintegration path. But during the recent lockdown educators, VET mentors and job coaches working with people with disabilities have found a lot of challenges to continue delivering career advise and job coaching to their target group due to three main issues:1. A lack of digital competences for mentoring and job coaching on-line.2. Scarcity of digital job coaching tools and methods.3. The digital gap in the access to on line services by people with disabilities.WORK@BLE project tackles these three challenges faced by people with disabilities and the VET mentors/job coaches working with this group to enable then and the professionals to recieve and deliver the job coaching services respectively, by these means: 1. Training job coachers in the use of digital job coaching tools.2. Developing an innovative digital coaching toolkit and a friendly platform tailored to the needs of the target group. (IO1)3. Developing an educative digital e-Scape Room for assessing job skills (IO2)The two outputs are tailored to the digital needs of the target groups. Professionals could undergo their job coaching on line to people with learning difficulties and limited digital skills. The latest will not only improve their employability but also will train their digital skills by using the platform and the e-Scape Room. WORK@BLE exchanges good practices and identifies innovative job coaching tools in order to digitalize them, trains jobcoaches and VET mentors working in the field of people with disabilities, and also creates a friendly job coaching platform and a digital Scape Room to assess job skills. Everything accessible for the final target group and thus enabling the coachers delivering e-coaching. In few words, WORK@BLE breaks down digital barriers and promotes the access to labour market and to autonomous active living to disadvantaged groups.

Context/BackgroundAn increasing group of persons have challenges to enter and participate at the open labour market. Especially persons with a disability and having qualifications on a lower level, face a future without realistic chances of participating in the society by finding appropriate employment fitting to their qualifications and competencies. These challenges exist in many countries. It is therefore that service providers and educators of persons with a disability are looking for new strategies to create more chances in entering and participating in the labour market. Traditional employment strategies for students with a disability mainly focus on the individual student with a disability. Strategies focusing on the added value for the employer are rarely used or neglected. The approach is that a new strategy, focusing on the added value for the employer, will increase the opportunities for students with a disability and low formal qualifications. This requires a paradigm shift.This new strategy of creating jobs that benefits employers, is called Inclusive Job Design. Inclusive Job Design is a comprehensive term for an employer-oriented method to create sustainable employment for persons with disabilities whose chances of competitive employment are limited, especially for those who have a low level of qualification and limited competences. The method of Inclusive Job Design implies the re-designing of work processes, analyzing and splitting the job-activities of existing jobs in various levels of complexity. The aim of this method is to create a positive business case for the employer and in the same time to create inclusive employment opportunities for the student with a disability. ObjectivesThe project aim was to enlarge the sustainable employment opportunities in the open labour market for VET students with a disability by: •building up the capacity of those organisation’s providing employment services by implementing the methodology of Inclusive Job Design. •building up specific competencies of VET providers (e.g. employment specialists) working with VET students with disabilities.The expected results in the project were: •To develop and to test a curriculum for VET providers based on the Inclusive Job Design concept. •To create sustainable partnerships between VET Providers and Employers. •To increase the knowledge of project partners about Inclusive Job Design, Corporate Social Responsibility and Inclusive Employment strategies for students with a disability. •To increase the competences of the project partners to apply the Inclusive Job Design-Methodology. •To increase the number of successful and sustainable placement opportunities for VET students with a disability into the labour market (by using the Inclusive Job Design method). In order to achieve the expected results, 4 Intellectual Outputs were produced, tested and finalised. IO1. Self-Assessment Instrument With this self-assessment tool, organisations are able to identify strengths and issues for improvement that are considered to be key factors for implementing the methodology of Inclusive Job Design. IO2. Curriculum for employment specialists The curriculum is an education and training program for implementing Inclusive Job Design methodology. It also includes examples of good practices. The curriculum is meant for employment specialists who facilitate and support the job finding process. IO3. Manual for employment specialists The manual consists of guidelines for applying the methodology of Inclusive Job Design. The manual is meant for supporting VET providers in applying the methodology of Inclusive Job Design for supporting companies to increase their efficiency and to create sustainable employment for students with a disability. IO4. Guidelines and recommendations for VET providers The guidelines for VET providers is a descriptive study on feasibility of implementing Inclusive Job Design. It describes barriers and facilitators of implementing the Inclusive Job Design methodology in the countries of the project partners.Profile of the participantsIn the project we worked with 2 expert partners and 7 VET providers. The experts were selected for their expertise and experiences in building up competences and applying the method of Inclusive Job Design. Both partners had successful experiences in international projects and they have skills and competences to develop information, learning and training materials in an international context and they had experiences in evaluating both processes and results.As for the VET partners, these were employment specialists of the VET provider, working with VET students in a dis-advanced position. Example of employees involved are: apprenticeship trainers, vocational rehabilitation specialists, labour office employment specialists, trainers of jobseekers.From each VET provider, 2 staff members of each of these partners participated in the project.Results, impact and longer term benefitsReflecting on the expected results, all intellectual outputs(including the curriculum for VET providers) have been developed and tested. These outputs are posted on the project website in all languages of project partners. Knowledge and competences of the project partners are increased. Also sustainable partnerships between VET providers and employers and successful and sustainable placement opportunities have been increased. The achievement of placement opportunities is still low. The Covid-19 pandemic and its International, National and Local measures of restriction, has limited impact on this objective. Initiatives to build up capacity outside the partnership have been started up in Austria and Norway after removing the restrictions. This is later than planned and will take place after the project now the Covid-19 restrictions are less.Evaluation shows that the project has had significant impact on creating awareness and, though no goal at itself in the project, a limited impact on the actual placement of VET students with a disability. The majority of the participants stated in the closing meeting that, because of participating in the project, they are more focused on creating added value for employers as the starting point as a starting point their employement activities. The results of this evaluation are posted on the project website under 7.10.