ICT enabled tool for vocational training and evaluation of persons with mental retardation

Abstract

'Prayatna' a web based tool, is an innovative attempt to introduce the power of ICT in vocational training and assessment of persons with mental retardation. Training and evaluation of persons with mental retardation has many challenges. The most significant challenges are the identification of an appropriate vocational opportunity, suitable work environment and assessing the person's readiness to be trained for a job. The work environment is treated as four types such as comprehensively sheltered employment, sheltered employment, partially sheltered employment and open work employment. The Job readiness of the person is assessed using a graded vocational test and dexterity assessment and a vocational profile is created for each individual. Job analysis is done by breaking the job into major tasks and sub tasks. The tool automatically matches a suitable job (or a major task of a job) by normalizing the requirement of a job (or a major task) vis-à-vis to the strength and needs of an individual by correlating the job requirement with the strength of the person. It also provides a framework for baseline and term-wise evaluation of the progress of each individual.