A technology and human expert step-by-step process is proposed to provide persons with disabilities an opportunity to independently develop their own ideas as entrepreneurs. Many persons with disabilities have a propensity to become entrepreneurs but often times have difficulty accessing and participating in traditional entrepreneurial activities. Our goal is to develop an online environment that allows persons with disabilities to participate more fully in the process of becoming and being an entrepreneur. In addition to providing individuals with disabilities a tool set to improve and enhance entrepreneurship among them, the proposed collaborative environment will be a very powerful research tool to test hypotheses about the cognitive, affective, and inter-personal constructs and mechanisms involved in entrepreneurship and among persons with disabilities. For example, the proposed environment would allow both formal and informal firsthand inquiry of entrepreneurial and technology questions. Additionally, the proposed environment would allow research on entrepreneurship and on cognitions of persons with disabilities in non-laboratory and non-classroom situations. Authentic field and informal learning experiences are regarded by educators as important for advancing learning and motivation to pursue career paths in entrepreneurship. Unlike other, laboratory-based research on these topics, the proposed environment would be able to obtain relatively large and potentially quite representative samples of individuals engaging in real-life problem solving and assessment. Thus, in addition to allowing the testing of new mechanisms/hypotheses, the proposed environment would also allow generalizability studies from prior laboratory-based research into the "real world".
Broader Impacts: The proposed project will provide technology to persons with disabilities that will allow them to experience entrepreneurial education activities from a hands-on perspective. This will promote learning and may enhance self confidence in their capacity to function independently in starting their own businesses. This could lead to an increase in the number of individuals with disabilities entering the workforce and supporting related activities of other disabled or able-bodied entrepreneurs. Persons with disabilities are frequently unemployed and draw taxpayer monies for support. Increased representation of persons with disabilities in entrepreneurship by its very nature will reduce their unemployment numbers and the need for taxpayer support for not just the founder of the effort, but perhaps several employees who also have disabilities. Non-disabled entrepreneurs can use this program as well and it should be equally effective.
