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Disaboom
www.disaboom.com
The
disability community has made many inroads over the
past few decades. All the way from
deinstitutionalization, to the founding of the
independent living movement, to the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Olmstead vs. L.C.
Supreme Court decision - which are among the many
historical advances made by the disability community.
There are also professional adaptive sports,
accessibility, and changes in the attitudes of society
as well as individuals themselves. People with disabilities now
live and compete more in the mainstream than ever before.
A lot remains to be done but our point here is that
people in the disability community have grown to be a political
and economic power. They are also a viable market for
commerce because they are people who live in the
mainstream, have jobs, businesses, houses - they create
wealth and are consumers of products and services.
This brings us to our site of the month. It’s
different than many of the sites we have featured, it’s
not a grass-roots website, it’s not a government
site, it’s not a site operated by a not-for-profit
organization or group. It’s a commercial site - a
commercial site aimed at the disability community and
not unlike tens of thousands of other commercial sites
on the web, complete with ads, product reviews, a
career center and a social networking component.
Our site of the month is named: Disaboom.
The slogan of the site is “Live Forward,” and the
title in your browser reads: “Transforming the way
people living with disabilities communicate, share,
and grow.”
Disaboom
was started by J. Glen House, MD., who became a C7
Tetraplegic as result of a skiing accident and
subsequently graduated from medical school and became
a physician. The site was launched on October 2, 2007.
What is unique about
Disaboom
is the commercial nature of its creation. It is a
publicly traded company which acquired $2.89 million
equity financing in April of 2007. It has a management
team, a board of directors - everything you would
expect of a commercial business and corporation.
Why are we featuring this site? It’s another important
event in the journey from a segregated society to an eventual
level playing field for people with disabilities. This
is not the only business started by someone with a
disability and not the only commercial website aimed
at the disability community. It does have the potential to
be the largest website of its kind and certainly
Disaboom
has been the most public with months of press
releases, media coverage as well as marketing
agreements with a number of large companies. That’s
what makes this so unique and it really illustrates
that people with disabilities are a sought after
market - just like anyone else or any other group.
Although the primary audience are from the disability
community,
Disaboom
is also a community for people from non-disabled communities such
as family, friends, caregivers, rehabilitation
providers and employers.
The
Disaboom
website is designed as a web community - part
information, part news, part discussion part social
networking and many other features. You can join
Disaboom
and become a member for free, much like you
would for Facebook or MySpace. Members of the Disaboom
community can share information with other members,
post their own blogs, images and videos just like in
the mainstream social networking sites.
Disaboom
is divided into a number of
sections:
- A
“Health” section is a repository of
articles organized under various topics
including spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy,
traumatic brain injury, and others. The
articles are authored by medical experts and
visitors can add comments to any article.
- A
“Living” section features articles on such
diverse topics as on relationships, dating,
dining with dignity, breaking in a new pair of
shoes, secrets of wheelchair airline travel,
along with dozens of other subjects. New
articles are posted all the time and you can
also add comments.
- A
section called “Media Room” has posted
videos (not unlike YouTube) some of which are
sports related as well as instructional and
are created by its members.
- A
“Discussion” section follows the
traditional bulletin board format under a
number of topics.
- A
“Career Center” section includes a
searchable database of jobs. There are plans
to include expanded features for employer
recruitment, virtual job fairs, resume posting
and more.
- A
“Community” section is where you will find
Disaboom
community members personal pages and their blog postings.
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There is more to Disaboom that what we have presented
here - all the more reason for you to visit them and
find out what they are about.
Disaboom has attracted some major advertisers including
disability and non-disability products such as: iBot
wheelchairs, Cricket Wireless, Bioness, PRN Medical
Store, Flexisizer, Ford Mobility, and more. Disaboom
banner ads have been appearing all over the web on
general sites including the Drudge Report and other
high-profile pages.
At the time of this writing Disaboom has been live a
little over one month. The online community has quickly
grown and there is are an active group of people participating. The
written content is impressive (which includes a section
on traumatic brain injury). Disaboom
has great potential as a disability resource site and as a
commercial venture.
All of this has been done before, mostly at the
grass-roots level. There are other commercial disability
sites as well but none that has made such a big splash
in the media as Disaboom has. Could
Disaboom become the
Facebook or Google for the upwardly mobile disability
community and are they truly a market and not simply a
niche? Has the playing field really been leveled to the
point where the disability community can compete? That
is the belief of the creators of Disaboom and to the online community it is
spawning. We think so as well.
Take a moment to visit Disaboom and explore their web
community.
Northeast Center for Special Care is pleased to present Disaboom
as our website of the month for October, 2007. They are just a
click away, and don't forget to bookmark them so you can visit again.
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Disclaimer:
Reference in this web site to any specific
organizations, commercial products, process, service,
manufacturer, or company does not constitute its
endorsement or recommendation by Northeast Center for
Special Care.
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