Amandipp Singh has a simple test he runs when pitching Enabled Talent to potential partners. He asks them to try using Indeed or LinkedIn with their eyes closed.
Singh has partial vision impairment himself. The test tends to land. Most mainstream job platforms are built without meaningful accessibility in mind, which helps explain why the unemployment rate for Canadians with disabilities was 7.6% in 2023 compared to 4.6% for Canadians without - a gap that has persisted despite Ontario's Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act setting a target of full accessibility by January 2025.
On April 8, Singh launched a pilot of Enabled Talent in Greater Sudbury, operating out of the NORCAT innovation centre. The platform uses AI to match job seekers with disabilities to employers - identifying what industries a person with a specific impairment could work in, what training and skill development they need, and what accessibility supports are required to get them there.
Why Sudbury
Singh chose Sudbury deliberately. The region has one of the highest concentrations of people on the Ontario Disability Support Program in the province - a program that costs the provincial government $6 billion annually. Singh frames the economics plainly: every person moved from ODSP into employment reduces government spending and adds GDP. Even at a conservative outcome of 300 to 500 people entering employment per year from the Sudbury region alone, he sees meaningful fiscal impact alongside the human one.
The pilot will bring on five to eight full-time employees between April and September, followed by 10 to 15 students from Laurentian University and Cambrian College - specifically students with disabilities, recruited as co-designers rather than just users. One component of the project is developing an inclusive office space concept that draws on best practices from Japan, South Korea, Austria, and Germany.
Singh's longer-range estimates suggest Enabled Talent could help between 500 and 2,000 people with disabilities in the Sudbury area enter the workforce, and between 700 and 1,500 people nationally within the first year of broader operations.
The Scale of the Problem
The numbers behind this story are striking. Nearly 27% of the Canadian population - one in four people - is considered disabled. Globally, Singh estimates more than 500 million working-age people with disabilities have the education or skills to contribute to the workforce but are not participating in it. David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, said employment remains one of the areas where Ontario has most visibly fallen short of its accessibility commitments.
Enabled Talent has already run pilots in Africa through the UNICEF Startup Lab, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Spain. Sudbury is Singh's first Canadian expansion outside Toronto - and a test of whether AI-powered employment matching can close a workforce gap that legislation alone has not.
