In-Person Assistants, On Site, Anywhere in the United States

On-site assistance, staffed like the rest of our field work

Every service Taika has sold since 2009 eventually comes down to the same problem: a competent person, vetted for the setting, standing in the right room at the right time — and a second one ready when the first is ill. Court interpreters, ASL and CART teams, conference technicians and event coordinators all run on that machinery. In-person assistants run on it too.

That matters more than it sounds. The hard part of on-site work is almost never finding somebody willing; it is coverage, substitution, travel, timesheets, and the discipline to keep a placement staffed in week nine as carefully as in week one.

Qualified readers and sighted guides

For personnel who are blind or have low vision, a qualified reader reads printed and on-screen material aloud and describes visual content — so the employee does their own job, with the same information everyone else has. Some agencies call this reader services; the regulation calls it a qualified reader, and they are the same request. Federal regulation names this directly: reasonable accommodation includes “the provision of qualified readers or interpreters” (29 CFR 1630.2(o)(2)(ii)).

Sighted-guide support is the companion need and a different skill: moving safely through unfamiliar buildings, conference floors, and travel days. We staff both, together or separately, for a single appointment or an ongoing assignment.

The other roles on the accommodation side

The rule’s preamble lists the on-site services agencies commonly provide as reasonable accommodations: “sign language interpreters, readers, assistance with note taking or photocopying, or permission to use a job coach.” We staff that whole line, not just the reading half —

• Note-takers for meetings, briefings, training and hearings, where an employee cannot take their own notes and follow the room at the same time.
• Photocopying and document-handling assistance, the unglamorous request that stalls for months because nobody owns it.
• Job coaches, where an agency’s approved accommodation calls for one.

Sign language interpreting sits on this list too, and it is a service Taika has run since 2009 — see ASL and CART if that is the part you need.

Personal assistance services are a separate thing — and not ours

Federal agencies also owe personal assistance services to employees with a targeted disability, during work hours and job-related travel. The rule covers assistance with activities of daily living — “for example, assistance with removing and putting on clothing, eating, and using the restroom” — and is explicit that PAS is help “not otherwise required as a reasonable accommodation” (29 CFR 1614.203(d)(5)).

Taika does not provide personal care. No dressing, no toileting, no feeding. If that is your requirement, we are not your vendor and we would rather say it on the scoping call than three weeks into a placement.

We tell you the distinction anyway, because agencies that blur the two tend to under-staff one of them. A reader helps someone do their job; a personal assistance service provider helps someone get through the workday. They are authorized, funded and documented differently. The rule’s own preamble puts “sign language interpreters, readers, assistance with note taking or photocopying, or permission to use a job coach” on the accommodation side — which is the side we staff.

What we also do not do is decide what you owe. Entitlement is your agency’s determination, through your own request and interactive processes. Nothing here is legal advice, and no placement makes an agency compliant by itself.

And the ordinary case: someone has to be there

Not every in-person need is an accommodation. Sometimes a program simply requires a person on site — a multi-day hearing, a conference, a site visit, an office that needs hands for a week, a project whose next step cannot happen over a video call. We place people for that too, in all 50 states and DC, for one day or for an ongoing schedule, on the contracts you already hold.

If the person also needs to speak another language, that is the easiest part of the request — it is the company you are already asking.