# PLEASE: Computers Will Always Need a Human

## BCBA Population

BCBA certification follows the behavior, not the population. BCBAs work with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental health disorders, and other behavioral concerns across schools, long-term care facilities, clinics, and in-home services. As of December 2023, there are over 64,000 BCBAs worldwide. Demand increased 23% from 2021 to 2022. ASD prevalence in the U.S. is approximately 1 in 31 children (CDC ADDM, April 2025).

This is the workforce that already knows how to teach discrimination tasks, measure response accuracy, and fade prompts. Every one of them is a potential supervisor for PLEASE attestation employment.

## Economic

The current supported employment model for people with IDD pays minimum wage or subminimum wage (14(c) certificates under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act) for work that requires physical presence, transportation, job coaching, and neurotypical performance masking. The Biden DOL proposed phasing out 14(c); that rulemaking was withdrawn July 2025. Thirteen states have eliminated them independently. A 2023 GAO report found 50% of 14(c) workers earned less than $3.50/hour.

PLEASE attestation work is per-tap micro-transactions. No commute. No schedule. No social performance requirement. The individual works from wherever they are, at whatever pace their discrimination accuracy supports. The BCBA adjusts prompt complexity based on data the same way they adjust clinical trials. The economic model shifts from subsidized placement to productivity in a labor market that structurally needs human attestation. The taps have economic value because automated systems cannot proceed without them. This is infrastructure, not makework.

## Psychological

The current employment model for people with significant disabilities requires approximation of neurotypical behavior. Stand here. Greet the customer. Follow this script. Maintain eye contact. The cost is masking: exhausting, correlated with burnout, depression, and autistic burnout specifically.

PLEASE removes the masking requirement. The tap does not care about eye contact, vocal tone, social reciprocity, or processing speed beyond the individual's own baseline. The work is the behavior they are already learning. There is no performance layer between the skill and the job. Employment without masking changes what "employable" means structurally.

## Sociological

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports employment-population ratio for people with disabilities at 22.7%, compared to 65.5% without (2024 data). The gap is widest for people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities.

PLEASE does not close this gap by making disabled people fit into existing jobs. It creates a job category where the required skill set is one they already possess or are actively learning. The job was designed from the irreducible unit of human action upward, not from existing job descriptions downward. The inclusion is architectural, not accommodative.

## Adjacent Industries

### Vocational rehabilitation

State VR agencies spend billions annually on job placement, job coaching, and supported employment services. Most of that spend is on intermediary layers: the job coach, the job developer, the employer relationship manager. PLEASE subtracts those intermediaries. The BCBA is already the clinician of record. The tap data is already the progress measurement. The VR agency's role shifts from "find and maintain a placement" to "authorize and monitor attestation work" -- cheaper, more measurable, better outcome data.

### Medicaid / HCBS waiver programs

Home and Community-Based Services waivers fund supported employment as a Medicaid service. Forty-seven states plus DC operate at least one 1915(c) HCBS waiver (approximately 257 active programs). Supported employment is an allowable habilitation service under these waivers, though actual claiming remains uneven nationally. PLEASE attestation work, supervised by a BCBA, fits within existing HCBS service definitions for supported employment and prevocational services. The billing does not require new codes. The documentation is already generated by the tap log. The state auditor can verify employment outcomes from the same data the BCBA uses for clinical decisions.

### AAC and assistive technology vendors

The current market (Tobii Dynavox, Lingraphica, CentralReach) charges $100-$15,000+ for devices (high end is eye-tracking hardware). AAC software like Proloquo2Go costs $100-$300 as one-time licensing. CentralReach announced an agentic AI layer (March 2026) to automate revenue cycle operations for autism and IDD care -- adding layers on top of their platform. subtract subtracts the platform. A commodity tablet running the kiosk renderer does what their dedicated device does, logs the same data, and the data format is open.

### The gig economy

Uber, DoorDash, TaskRabbit all require neurotypical navigation of complex apps, real-time decision-making under time pressure, and social interaction with strangers. PLEASE attestation requires none of that. It is gig work structurally accessible to people with significant cognitive disabilities. Unlike gig work that races to the bottom on price, attestation has a floor: the tap has cryptographic and legal value that does not depreciate with scale, because each attestation is unique.

## Core Claim

Every industry listed above currently defines workforce participation as "can this person perform in an environment designed for neurotypical people?" PLEASE redefines it as "can this person make a binary decision when presented with a scoped prompt?" That is a lower bar but not a lesser one. The tap is the irreducible unit of human agency. Everything above it is intermediary. ABA therapy already measures whether an individual can meet that bar, at what accuracy, with what prompt support, across what generalization conditions.

The BCBA is the only professional with the existing methodology, credentialing, ethical framework, and billing infrastructure to supervise this work. The field already teaches the atomic unit. PLEASE is the labor market that values it.

## Dependency Chain

The BCBA industry is not the customer. It is the credibility layer that makes the actual customers take the meeting. The sequence has three steps and each depends on the one before it.

**1. Clinical validation.** BCBAs validate that the tap is a teachable, measurable, reliable skill. Discrete trial data proves a population of people can discriminate scoped prompts at auditable accuracy levels. Without this step, PLEASE is a protocol looking for a workforce.

**2. Workforce.** Clinical evidence produces a population of trained attestors with supervised accuracy data, an existing credentialing body (BACB), an existing supervisory profession (BCBA), and an existing billing pathway (HCBS waivers). Without this step, PLEASE is infrastructure with no one to operate it.

**3. Platform integration.** A supervised, measured, accountable human attestation service is what you bring to payment processors, identity providers, and platform operators. The conversation is not "here is a protocol spec, please integrate it." The conversation is "here is a workforce that can do the thing your systems need, here is the clinical data proving reliability, here is the institutional infrastructure that supervises and pays for it, now let's talk about gate-side integration."

Step 1 is happening now. Step 2 follows from step 1 with existing infrastructure. Step 3 is an enterprise conversation that step 2 makes possible.

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*Verified: April 2026. Sources: BACB certificant data, CDC ADDM (Apr 2025), BLS 2024, GAO 14(c) report (2023), CentralReach press release (Mar 2026), CMS HCBS waiver data.*