Fewer than one in five Americans with a disability were employed in 2019, and it’s not for a lack of trying. The truth is, people with disabilities face a lot of barriers to a good job. In addition to disability discrimination, people with disabilities face barriers in education, transportation, and work environments. While these obstacles are still present, technology is opening up new opportunities for people with disabilities to find work.

Would you like to know more? Below are three ways that people with disabilities are harnessing technology to finally get hired.

Online Degree Programs

Colleges and universities are required to accommodate disabled students, but many young adults with disabilities still struggle in the standard college environment. Online degree programs let people with disabilities pursue higher education in the setting of their choosing so they can focus on learning, not navigating complicated disability documentation.

While getting a degree doesn’t guarantee a job, it does increase the odds of employment for people with disabilities. Depending on the program, it could open a path to self-employment.

Start a Home-Based Business

People with disabilities are nearly twice as likely to be self-employed — 10 percent of workers with a disability run their own business compared to 5.9 percent of workers without a disability. Home-based businesses are especially popular among people with disabilities because it eliminates the need to commute or find an accessible office.

However, that doesn’t mean working from home is effortless for people with disabilities. Entrepreneurs with physical limitations may need to install grab bars in their workspace, purchase adaptive computing equipment, or invest in web accessibility tools that allow them to work efficiently. In some cases, home-based workers may be able to get grants to help pay for home modifications. The Self-Sufficiency Grant from ModestNeeds.org, for example, offers assistance to people who are pursuing self-sufficiency but aren’t necessarily low-income. Adults with spinal cord injury should consider the Individual Adaptive Equipment Grant from the Travis Roy Foundation, which helps with small home modifications including adaptive computers.

Find a Remote Job

Starting a business isn’t the only way to work from home. As remote jobs become commonplace, there are more opportunities for people with disabilities to find a job that allows telecommuting. In addition to finding a full- or part-time W-2 job, people with disabilities can get hired on a freelance basis through online platforms like UpWork and FlexJobs.

Some common remote jobs include:

• Customer service representative

• Virtual assistant

• Data entry clerk

• Medical coder

• Developer

• Graphic designer

• Social media manager

• Writer

Take Advantage of Assistive Technology

For some people, home is where they’re happiest and most productive, but not everyone thrives working at home. Remote work offers fewer opportunities to mingle with colleagues, gain hands-on training, or rub elbows with higher-ups. These drawbacks can be especially pronounced for people with disabilities who already face barriers to career advancement.

Luckily, new leaps in assistive technology mean that workers with disabilities don’t have to shy away from the office. Whether it’s glasses that convert the written word to spoken language or exoskeletal arms that support strength and dexterity, there is a wide range of tools that enable people with disabilities to be an asset in the workplace.

A job is more than an income; it’s also a connection to a community, a sense of purpose, and a source of fulfillment. While it may be a while before every person with a disability who wants a job can find one, technology is opening up countless doors for people with disabilities.

Image via Pexels

Cause: Something to do with how Blender finds primary display in Windows environment and that data is saved in the startup blend file???

Fix: A bug report (https://developer.blender.org/T34962) has been opened for a very long time, but we need to further narrow down the root cause in order to fix it.

Workaround: When Blender opens in the wrong display (usually after an upgrade or after saving a new startup.blend file), you have to change your Windows Display Settings, then resave your default startup file, then reset your WIndows Display Settings back to your normal configuration. When you reopen Blender, it should open in the primary display device.

NOTICE: Depending on your display dimensions and configuration, fixing Blender may cause you to have to reset some custom settings (like reorganizing your desktop shortcut icons). The inconvenience of having to reset the locations of a few icons after the process usually far outweighs the inconvenience of the blender bug.

Instructions:

1. Go to your desktop, right-click on your desktop and choose Display Settings
2. Go to Multiple Display settings and change from Extend to Duplicate Display, apply and click Keep Settings. Minimize settings window.
3. In Blender, resave your default.blend file by going to File -> Defaults -> Save Startup File and then close Blender.
4. Go back to Display Settings again (maximize the window or if you closed it: go to your desktop, right-click on your desktop and choose Display Settings).
5. Go to Multiple Display settings and change from Duplicate to Extend Display, apply and click Keep Settings. Close settings window.
6. Open up Blender and it should now open in the primary display device.

The US House of Representatives has PASSED BOTH Articles of #Impeachment for Donald Trump:
Article #1: 230 to 197 (1 PRES / 3 NV)
Article #2: 229 to 198 (1 PRES / 3 NV)

The 658 page House Judiciary Committee Report on the #Impeachment of Donald J. #Trump

https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/CRPT-116hrpt346.pdf

This resolution impeaches President Donald J. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors.
The resolution sets forth two articles of impeachment of the President: (1) abuse of power by soliciting the interference of Ukraine in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and (2) obstruction of Congress by directing defiance of certain subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives. -- H.Res.755 — 116th Congress

RESOLUTION = H. RES. 755 - Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE I: ABUSE OF POWER

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. In his conduct of the office of President of the United States—and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency, in that:

Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations. President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit. In so doing, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.

President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct through the following means:

(1) President Trump—acting both directly and through his agents within and outside the United States Government—corruptly solicited the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into—

(A) a political opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.; and

(B) a discredited theory promoted by Russia alleging that Ukraine—rather than Russia—interfered in the 2016 United States Presidential election.

(2) With the same corrupt motives, President Trump—acting both directly and through his agents within and outside the United States Government—conditioned two official acts on the public announcements that he had requested—

(A) the release of $391 million of United States taxpayer funds that Congress had appropriated on a bipartisan basis for the purpose of providing vital military and security assistance to Ukraine to oppose Russian aggression and which President Trump had ordered suspended; and

(B) a head of state meeting at the White House, which the President of Ukraine sought to demonstrate continued United States support for the Government of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

(3) Faced with the public revelation of his actions, President Trump ultimately released the military and security assistance to the Government of Ukraine, but has persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting Ukraine to undertake investigations for his personal political benefit.

These actions were consistent with President Trump’s previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections.

In all of this, President Trump abused the powers of the Presidency by ignoring and injuring national security and other vital national interests to obtain an improper personal political benefit. He has also betrayed the Nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.

Wherefore President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

ARTICLE II: OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. In his conduct of the office of President of the United States—and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald J. Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its “sole Power of Impeachment”. President Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency in a manner offensive to, and subversive of, the Constitution, in that:

The House of Representatives has engaged in an impeachment inquiry focused on President Trump’s corrupt solicitation of the Government of Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 United States Presidential election. As part of this impeachment inquiry, the Committees undertaking the investigation served subpoenas seeking documents and testimony deemed vital to the inquiry from various Executive Branch agencies and offices, and current and former officials.

In response, without lawful cause or excuse, President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with those subpoenas. President Trump thus interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, and assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the “sole Power of Impeachment” vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.

President Trump abused the powers of his high office through the following means:

(1) Directing the White House to defy a lawful subpoena by withholding the production of documents sought therein by the Committees.

(2) Directing other Executive Branch agencies and offices to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of documents and records from the Committees—in response to which the Department of State, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense refused to produce a single document or record.

(3) Directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees—in response to which nine Administration officials defied subpoenas for testimony, namely John Michael “Mick” Mulvaney, Robert B. Blair, John A. Eisenberg, Michael Ellis, Preston Wells Griffith, Russell T. Vought, Michael Duffey, Brian McCormack, and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.

These actions were consistent with President Trump’s previous efforts to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference in United States elections.

Through these actions, President Trump sought to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own conduct, as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives in the exercise of its “sole Power of Impeachment”. In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. This abuse of office served to cover up the President’s own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment—and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.

In all of this, President Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

#impeached ⚖️ #history

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you will know exactly what to do.

When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.

When someone is in your life for a SEASON, it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season. And like Spring turns to Summer and Summer to Fall, the season eventually ends.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person or people involved; and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships, and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. Thank you for being a part of my life.

~ Brian A. (Drew) Chalker

1. Record an audio track of character dialogue.
2. Analyse the audio track using speech-to-text artificial intelligence.
3. Receive speech-to-text results, but with the time offset information for words and phonemes.
4. Import those encoded results into a Blender 3D animation timeline.
5. Blender uses those results to match phonemes with timeline.
6. Mouth shape from character pose library is selected based on phoneme and timeline.

While this sounds like a dream (because it would be), I actually think the pieces for this are already out there. With Google Speech API, I can post my audio file to the AI and get reliable speech-to-text conversion with word confidence scores. If in our Python script, we set:

enable_word_time_offsets=True

we get the text results with time offsets for each word. I'm going to check with Google, but I bet there is a debug flag available to get the offsets for time offsets for each individual phoneme. Why can't we use that data to re-associate the words with our timeline in Blender?

Working from the other end of the pipeline, I see a Papagayo product that puts text into mouth shapes, and I see a Blender addon called Automatic Lipsync that puts the Papagayo data into Blender.

Mission: Don't we now have the technology to put ALL of these together into either a addon plugin, or better yet core?

I'm fairly new to Blender, so this is going to be above my skill level - but folks - although ambitious I see no reason why this isn't possible? Where do I begin to make this happen or what would be the most appropriate forum to further the discussion?

Resources:

A primer on using Google Cloud Speech API and how speech recognition works.

A page with instructions and example Python code for processing audio with time offsets.

The official page for Papagayo.

The official page for Lip Sync Add-on.

And of course, Blender 3D!

When a task or project falters, the (hopefully) automatic reaction is to do a thorough failure analysis, but you should also conduct a quick autopsy on even the most successful ones.  

Here's an example of how I apply this concept to every activity (even recreational ones):  For stress relief, I fly a virtual Cessna in a flight simulator usually taking off at DeKalb Peachtree and landing at Hartsfield-Jackson. Although I've made that flight a million times now, each time my "game" session is over I do a playback and autopsy of that flight.  I take away the excitement (or boredom) of what is happening out the window of the plane and just focus on what the instruments were telling me. Since it is tied to real-time weather, every flight is unique.  Then I watch my landing from the perspective of a virtual chase plane and critique it. Could I have used less throttle or a different fuel/air mixture to get better gas mileage? Even what felt like a routine and perfect landing will reveal minor imperfections.

It is true that practice makes perfect, but you have to make sure you are practicing the most efficient and most correct methods or else you're actually just creating and re-enforcing bad habits.  Practice makes perfect, but try to practice perfection, not mastering the art of imperfection.

Geeks are going to rule the world, and right now security folks can name their price. The best jobs are going to be technology related, but there are some tech jobs that can be done by people with little tech skills.  I'll be writing more about Virtual Greeters in a few months, but anyone with high-speed Internet and a VR headset can already get an awesome job working from home (or anywhere with Internet access) in a four hour work shift.  A "Virtual Greeter" is like the Wal-Mart Door Greeter, you virtually stand on the front page of a web site and greet customers and answer questions. These are AWESOME jobs for the physically disabled!

I've always been about sharing my code with the world, but the problem with open-source is that it is driven mostly by self-interest. This means the harder, less-interesting parts of code never get tackled. To fix this, we're creating a hybrid approach. The code is still open-source, but we let developers bid on those projects so they can actually get paid to do that boring but critical work. One person has made over $60K just doing a bunch of little jobs. If we get creative, the community can do what the failing government can't accomplish!

Here's a look at what this new economy looks like, and although High Fidelity is looking for mostly geeks - non-geeks should still check out their site and click on the project and team buttons. I have a feeling the majority of the best jobs are going to be found through sites and new economies like this one:
https://worklist.net/

My secret missions at #HoodArmy have been completed, and I'm going to start slowly releasing the details to the public. I will go into those later, but for now I can only say I wish I could take credit for everything we're getting blamed for! If you add up the time involved for my verified projects, you'll see it isn't evenly humanly possible to accomplish much of the stupid stuff I sometimes get accused of. LOL