Northwestern student consulting group campusCATAYST teamed up earlier this month with non-profit web start-up JJ’s List to enhance its connection to University students.
The website compiles user reviews of how disability-friendly local businesses are - a task JJ’s List represetnative are hoping to crowdsource to students.
“JJ’s List really wants to reach out to a new target demographic of college students,” said the team’s project manager Bethany Polhamus, a Weinberg junior.
CampusCATALYST will aid JJ’s List in examining the interests of university-age students.
The campusCATALYST team, composed of four students and a Kellogg mentor, will be conducting interviews and distributing surveys to observe what attracts students to certain websites and how to get students interested in posting on and using JJ’s List.
At the end of the quarter the team will make recommendations as to how JJ’s List could promote student involvement. Polhamus said suggestions could include JJ’s List creating a local chapter at NU to help create awareness on campus.
Although it has been compared to Yelp and Angie’s List, JJ’s List appeals not only to people looking for a good place to eat, but provides an open forum for the disabled to review business’ disability customer service, said J.J. Hanley, executive director of JJ’s List.
Evanston-based JJ’s List also allows a variety of local businesses to promote their disability awareness services as well as to provide training for employees to better serve disabled customers. It also offers programs to help people with disabilities integrate into their community and gain common employment skills.
Hanley founded JJ’s List five years ago. Hanley said although some students may have participated in Special Olympics or Peer Buddies in their high schools, most would not be able to say what happened to their disabled peers after graduation.
“Though we educate children with disabilities now in the least restrictive ways possible by federal law, once those with disabilities leave high school, they head off in a very different trajectory than their peers without disabilities,” Hanley said. “There is nothing out there for them. We call it the wasteland.”
After high school, many disabled teens also find they have few chances of employment, Hanley said. According to the August 2011 unemployment report by the United States Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 16.1 percent, which is almost double the rate of the rest of the population.
Hanley said her original plan was to make a documentary about awaiting the aforementioned “wasteland.”
“As I was working on it, it evolved into something more proactive, Internet-based, and it became jjslist.com,” she said.
The JJ’s List organization includes disabled staff and volunteers. Evanston resident Jake Joehl is a volunteer and works as the social media assistant in charge of JJ’s List’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. He is also legally blind. With the help of a screen reader, Joehl’s visual disability is a nonissue for his work.
“Facebook has an audio feature which allows the visually-impaired to hear their every web action when posting to the website. However, the function isn’t perfect,” Joehl said.
He added the social network is not as accessible as other sites, citing its lackluster audio alternative for article postings.
During the past year, JJ’s List’s business training evolved into the Bridge Builder Project, through which representatives from JJ’s List reached out to Evanston businesses in efforts to improve its disability customer service.
Whole Foods Market, 1111 Chicago Ave., took on this commitment and has been working with JJ’s List for over two years. It employs many people with disabilities, including some on the leadership track.
“As long as that person can do the job, we are happy to give them a job,” said Bridget Isaia, marketing and community relations specialist at Whole Foods.
The premium grocery chain is now offering this business training to all stores in the Midwest region as well as its administrative offices, Isaia said.
Hanley said it is in the interest for businesses to cater to disabled customers as potentially lucrative consumers.
“The disabled marketplace spends over $200 billion a year in discretionary spending, and it would be a win-win for businesses to commit to inviting the disabled market customer or employee base,” Hanley said.
