“3Cloud has an amazing ability to take our AI-driven vision and bring it to reality. There have been very few instances in our company’s history where we have such a great relationship that makes dreams possible.”

John Robinson, CEO, Our Ability

The Solution

3Cloud partnered with our ability to develop an ai-powered solution. 

3Cloud engaged with Our Ability and the Microsoft AI for Accessibility program to develop an AI-driven solution with an emphasis on accessibility. To assist job seekers without any prior experience or planned career path, a questionnaire encompassing basic skills was developed by the company’s team. Responses to these questions were then mapped to frequently occurring broad skills. To facilitate even deeper skill matches, 3Cloud built a program using Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics API that analyzed text from applicants’ previous job descriptions and employers’ current job descriptions to pick out skills from these bodies of text. 

The application also utilizes a chatbot that is integrated with the web application’s visual user interface. While every attempt has been made to make the visual user interface compatible with screen readers, the chatbot interface was added to accommodate users that may be visually impaired, but not on a system with an adequate, if any, screen reader. The speech to text and text to speech technology behind that interface uses the Microsoft text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality. The speech to text and text to speech technology behind that interface uses the Microsoft text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality. Additionally, the chatbot wasn’t designed just as a fallback for the visually impaired, but also intended for those with cognitive issues that may make a traditional form-based job application a hurdle. For candidates that need a service like a traditional “job coach”, who can sit down and speak with them, the chatbot breaks the process into small pieces of conversational-like intake questions that can be paused or resumed at the candidate’s pace.

By understanding an individual’s skills and comparing this set of skills against all open positions, Our Ability could now make targeted recommendations as to which jobs might be the right fit. From the summation of skills identified in each job and a candidate’s identified skills, a ranked list of positions could then be computed and returned from the AI system. Then, this result could be filtered down to positions that are available within a certain radius using Azure Maps. A future enhancement to this system will allow for filtering based on commute time or restrictions on what positions are available by public transportation. 


The Results

The solution 3Cloud developed allows Our Ability to expand and automate their services by using AI to make targeted recommendations. It also allows them to filter down positions within a certain radius on geocoded data from Azure Maps. The single-focused chatbot interface enables users with physical and cognitive disabilities.

In addition, to further support users with cognitive disabilities, the entire interface to the profile-building process was constructed in the chatbot, and embedded into the website as an assistant built using the Microsoft Bot framework. This provides an interface to the job seeker that is single focus in nature, can be stopped or resumed at any time, and never encumbers the job seeker with more than a handful of questions in a row. The Microsoft provided webchat interface also includes excellent text-to-speech and speech-to-text services for users who might benefit from them but may not have screen reader software available at the time. 

Our partnership with Our Ability continues to grow, along with several other like-minded organizations who are also hoping to join the team on this initiative. We are humbled and honored to be a part of this solution development and greater cause. As the bot continues to gain traction, and as awareness for the site increases, we are excited to see the opportunities that become available for job seekers and employers.

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