Devis’ Access Jobs wins 2012 Innovation Award for Department of Labor’s Disability Employment App Challenge on Challenge.gov

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Development InfoStructure, Inc.’s (Devis) Access Jobs App wins the 2012 Innovation Award for DOL’s ODEP Disability Employment App Challenge on Challenge.gov. The Department of Labor (DOL) Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) sponsored the Disability Employment App Challenge to seek innovative technology tools that improve employment opportunities and outcomes for people with disabilities. The challenge is to use publicly available information, resources and data to build an application that promotes the employment of people with disabilities and was judged by notables such as Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com. Devis staff will receive the honors at the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Accessibility Initiative (A&I) event, "Developing with Accessibility (DevAcc)," held on September 6^th and 7^th, 2012. The event is designed to spur increased collaboration on accessibility solutions among developers from industry, consumer, and government sectors. One of the event’s key objectives is to promote the concept and practice of developing applications within accepted accessibility guidelines, thereby maximizing their usability for everyone, including people with disabilities.

“For job seekers, we wanted to provide a simple job search engine that was accessible and usable on any Internet-enabled device. For employers, we've made the task of adding your job listings easier than ever, and provided additional information on how to recruit the employees you are looking for.”

For the Disability Employment App Challenge, Devis uses an approach called Responsive Design. “The main goal of this is to create a single website that is device-agnostic and presents an optimized view for each user depending on the screen size and device capabilities. This is in contrast to less scalable “mobile” approaches that create separate mobile websites or mobile specific ‘apps’” says Ben Wetzel, user interface developer. “We also use ‘Zero Infrastructure Footprint (ZIF)’, an approach Devis developed for President Obama’s Veterans Job Bank initiative to minimize operational costs. ZIF leverages cloud-based search tools and smart ‘microdata tagging’ to find veteran-friendly and now disability-friendly job openings directly on an employer’s website. That’s smart government,” says Donald Oellerich, technical lead for the project. Access Jobs is designed with the goal of making both job seeking and recruitment easier. “For job seekers, we wanted to provide a simple job search engine that was accessible and usable on any Internet-enabled device. For employers, we've made the task of adding your job listings easier than ever, and provided additional information on how to recruit the employees you are looking for.” Stephanie McLeod, project manager.

For more information about Access Jobs, please visit https://accessjobs.devis.com/content/about. For additional details about the award please visit: http://social.dol.gov/blog/dol-and-developers-at-work%E2%80%94innovating-for-tomorrows-workforce/.

About Development InfoStructure, Inc.

Development InfoStructure (Devis) is a small, minority-owned, woman-owned business founded in 1992 to provide innovative, practical approaches to information management. Devis is a leading provider of IT Consulting services and solutions to federal, state and local governments as well as the international development community. Devis' standards-based, vendor-independent approach and active support of the open source community help maximize the return on clients' IT investments.

Devis is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. For more information about the company, please visit www.devis.com or contact Heidi Solis at 703-525-6485.