Working From Home To Help Blind People
Since we closed the brick and mortar portion of Salon Supplies + Interiors back in 2009 due to serious mold issues that the landlord wouldn’t address, I’ve done work out of my home office in Media and now in Swarthmore. In fact, the only time this century that I’ve worked outside of my home office is the nearly four years we operated the beauty supply and salon equipment business. Now with the pandemic, everybody wants or is working from home. Jane, for example, has set up shop at our dining room table. She does beauty PR for HL Group in NYC. She got out of NYC pretty early. I’m thankful she is not still there.
Eliz has been working from home, too. She is a preschool teacher, so it hasn’t been as easy working from home as it has been for Jane. Eliz has been Facetiming and Skyping with her students each week and talked to the student’s parents about how they’re doing on the materials that were sent home or delivered to them. It is not the same as being in her classroom with her kids, but it is how it has to be right now.
Episode Guest: Kimber Hill From VirtForce
My guest on this episode, Kimber Hill, founded a company called VirtForce. VirtForce connects military spouses, veterans, and transitioning service members with vetted remote work opportunities. Since military families move often, it is hard for military spouses to develop professionally. I know, you’re thinking, “What does this have to do with blind folks?” One of the companies that VirtForce has partnered with is Aira.
What is Aira?
I know I’ve mentioned Aira before, but in case you’ve forgotten, Aira is an app that connects blind and visually impaired people to trained agents to help with just about any task needed. Aira can be used with just your iPhone or with your iPhone paired with glasses that have a camera in the bridge. The glasses make it easy while out and about to help the agent help the user safely get to a meeting, appointment, or a meal with friends. I don’t have the glasses, but I’ve used Aira when everyone in the house is sleeping and I’ve dropped something and couldn’t find it. I’ve also used Aira to read the password off my router, read ingredients on a bottle, and read instructions off of a medicine bottle. Aira is the only service like this that I’d trust reading sensitive personal info like credit card numbers, bank statements, and social security numbers.
So you can see how important Aira is to blind and visually impaired people, especially in this time of stay at home orders when you can’t ask a friend to come over and help find that item in your kitchen cabinet. What makes VirtForce and Aira a great partnership is that Aira agents are needed all hours of the day so that military spouse living on the other side of the world can still be a huge help. The military spouse can continue to work for Aira whether living in Germany or Jacksonville.
Job Listings On VirtForce Website
There are plenty of other location independent job opportunities on the VirtForce website. You can find them at jobs.virtforce.us. So whether you are a military spouse looking for work or an employer looking to hire an Executive Assistant, Marketing and Social Media Specialist, or Service Desk Customer Support, to name a few current positions listed, go have a look.
Links Mentioned In This Episode