VisitAble's Day One
Hi! I'm Joe Jamison, Founder and CEO of VisitAble. Growing up, I watched the many disrespectful and offensive ways people interacted with my father who has paraplegia.
In 2019, I was asked to create a capstone project as part of my Entrepreneurship minor at the University of Virginia; my natural inclination was to find a way to help my father, and people who face similar situations.
The Early Stages
I began by learning as much as I could about how people with disabilities prefer to be treated. I began conducting focus groups, putting together survey efforts, and interviewed disabled people from all over the country. Over time, I pinpointed the lack of general disability understanding and etiquette as VisitAble's specific area of focus.
This understanding informs the training we provide today. These focus groups and surveys tell us everything we need to know in order to give an organization the tools to work with a broad range of disabled people. Our training builds a strong foundation of inclusivity by focusing on human connection and relationships over role protocol and basic compliance.
The Current VisitAble
Today, VisitAble serves as a resource for both the disability community and institutions, organizations, and companies all over America, connecting the two together.
Our Advocate Certification pairs the personal, specific, real-world experiences of people who have disabilities with the larger-scale needs of any organization; it has all the tools one needs to be able to accommodate and assist any visitor, employee, or stakeholder, while setting the ground-work for DEI initiatives of all shapes and sizes by placing emphasis on the human being, not just what meets the eye.
What's next for VisitAble?
In 2022, VisitAble hired Cory Paradis as Chief Operating Officer and began expanding its reach towards law enforcement agencies, Destination Marketing Organizations, banking, healthcare, and more. Cory, a life-long wheelchair user, leverages his experience to improve our training and interfaces with clients to make sure our training fits their needs and organizational goals.
To learn more about Cory and his journey, or simply to find another lens through which to view disability, please watch the video below.
