maccimizer contributes by

maccimizer has been an active part of the hearing-impaired community since our inception. the founders of maccimizer have been involved with this community since 1980. all of the principals of maccimizer are fluent in american sign language.

we also recognize that it is extremely difficult for hearing-impaired individuals to enter the high-tech industry. while everyone talks a good game, when it comes to hiring the hearing-impaired, the f.u.d. factor comes into play (fear - uncertainty - doubt).

government programs (vocational rehab, scholarships, unemployment assistance) help to some degree, and charitable organizations (goodwill and others) pitch in when they are able, but the fact of the matter is that for a hearing-impaired individual to get practical hands-on training, they need to be in a working environment for a solid period of time with full communication access.

let's be realistic here. vr and goodwill have good intentions, but at best they are able to pay for a month or two tops for full-on interpreting services to integrate a hearing-impaired individual into a new job. and unfortunately, due to the low amount of money they are able to pay, they can't necessarily find interpreters who are also high-tech experts.

at maccimizer, we use our existing language skills and position in the community to make a tangible difference for hearing-impaired individuals. here's how.

one of our key offerings at maccimizer is preventative maintenance contracts. through these contracts, we provide regular, scheduled preventative maintenance on your macs. this is usually scheduled for off-hours so that it doesn't negatively impact your work force. you may also select our monitor service, through which we monitor all of your software inventory for any patches or upgrades that become available during the month. when we come to your site, we install any pertinent upgrades/patches and perform the maintenance, keeping your macs at peak running performance during work time.

preventative maintenance (pm) contracts are an excellent format for using hearing-impaired interns. we actively recruit the hearing-impaired to work on these projects both short- and long-term. our internships are always paid and we generally pay full-market entry wages for these positions (in 1987 we were paying $15-$18 an hour, to give you an idea). we then include at least one hearing-impaired intern with our senior staff during each pm service, providing them excellent hands-on troubleshooting and basic operations experience. depending on their skill level, we may also have them do research on software patches and upgrades, developing their research and internet experience.

interns showing high skills and doing well in this area may be invited to field internships, where they work with a senior tech onsite handling day-to-day customer issues. if a customer is happy with the level of work they provide, they may be sent back in the future to that client as they are able to handle day-to-day needs. we never do this without making sure our clients are comfortable with our techs and that all communications issues are taken care of first.

website hosting, production and management also provide us another avenue to serve the hearing-impaired community. while project management and interfacing with clients requires verbal conversations, much of the actual work on the back end does not. whenever possible, we use hearing-impaired individuals on the back end to provide services where verbal communications skills are not a critical part of the job. all work done is always supervised by our senior technicians.

while it's nice to give lip-service to helping the community, maccimizer is proud to be in a position to "put our money where our mouth is." we're happy to be able to serve your needs, while helping people who want to work and make a meaningful difference in their own lives, while doing something productive.

we thank our customers who have allowed us to help willing hearing-impaired individuals to become qualified for better jobs and better income opportunities.

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