Enabled Employment, which was officially launched this week in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), is the brainchild of a woman who learned from personal experience how difficult it can be for people with disabilities to find suitable employment, reports The Canberra Times.

Suffering from anxiety, Jessica May believed that her skills and good work history meant that she could easily find a job that let her work from home: “I went looking and looking and looking, and I just couldn’t find anything that was the model I was thinking.”

Having identified a gap in the market, Mrs May started Enabled Employment. The online employment agency connects people with disabilities to employment opportunities that allow them to work from home.

“It’s an online marketplace for employees with a disability, who want to work from home, to be matched up with employers who are offering remote work opportunities. We’re really about removing all the barriers for employers to employ someone with a disability,” she explained.

The site already has already registered 150 jobseekers and 23 employers, with 13 people already placed in jobs.

Disability Minister Joy Burch said teleworking was a great option for people who may not be able to physically get into an office but have professional skills to contribute: "With one in five Australians experiencing disability, this is a great opportunity for employers to embrace alternative recruitment practices to tap into this skilled and available workforce.”

Mrs May believes Enabled Employment is having a hugely positive impact on the lives of people with disability eager to participate in the workforce: "It's really changing people's lives. We had one lady who has had 104 job interviews this year but because she's blind, as soon as she goes in, they're like 'we don't think we can accommodate that' but she's highly skilled and wants to work from home.”

"We've got another lady who has a PhD in computational mathematics with chronic fatigue, she was a lecturer and now she's doing investigations and blog writing for a technology company." 

Mrs May said starting the company had also had an enormously positive impact on her own life: "It's been amazing and also to put my skills into practice because I was just being so under-utilised once I found out I had a disability. My mental health is 100% better because I'm engaged and doing something."