JJ’s List empowers young adults with disabilities and equips businesses with the best practices to support employees and customers with disabilities.
What: JJ’s List’s Disability Awareness Players present a free Disability Awareness Training seminar for businesses in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
Where: Maggiano’s Old Orchard, 4999 Old Orchard Center, Suite A28, Skokie
When: Thursday, Oct. 10, 8–9:30 a.m.
How: Attend Disability Awareness Training for businesses to learn how to interact naturally and confidently with people with disabilities. The Disability Awareness Players, all young adults with disabilities, are building their professional skills while sharing valuable tips. The program will teach business professionals how to communicate with co-workers and customers with disabilities, build employees’ confidence, use disability-aware customer service practices and meet aging customers’ needs.
The organization: JJ’s List, the Evanston-based nonprofit founded in 2009 by local mom JJ Hanley, helps people with disabilities live independently by using the Internet to self-advocate. Hanley previously produced the award-winning PBS documentary “Refrigerator Mothers.” Inspired by Hanley’s personal experience raising a son with autism, “Refrigerator Mothers” focused on mothers of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, falsely accused by the medical establishment of causing their children’s autism by remaining emotionally frigid.
JJ’s List sponsors its Disability-Aware Business seal of approval, which instantly tells customers that a business is committed to disability awareness in the community. The website also hosts a community-driven disability-aware business directory, a trusted source of information for anyone seeking reviews and profiles of disability-friendly businesses. The directory, paired with consumer reviews, shares useful information about community businesses, services and professionals that make disability awareness part of their service in the workplace—or don’t.
JJ’s List’s Disability Awareness Training is a communications and marketing social enterprise that helps businesses incorporate disability-aware marketing, customer service and employment best practices into core business strategies. Additionally, JJ’s List provides meaningful career paths in communications, technology and digital marketing to people with disabilities. JJ’s List trains teens and adults with disabilities in core Internet life skills, including communications, self-advocacy and online safety, and offers employment skills internships, teaching website management skills to transitioning high school students and young adults.
JJ’s List believes the consumer voice of people with disabilities and the voice of their families and friends has the power to integrate businesses and communities, allowing people with disabilities to lead independent, productive lives.
Photo: Disability Awareness Players and participants from North Shore Senior Center after JJ’s List Disability Awareness Training on October 3, 2013.
