Kicking off the week is a wire story that will hopefully get picked up by media outlets looking to shine a light on employment opportunities for people disabilities. And by “wire story” I don’t only mean a release put out by PRWeb, but also a story about wires and what to do about them.
The cords that protect the wire circuitry for the ever-expanding inventory of electronic devices snaking out into our society can cause no end of frustration. One crimp in the wrong place on a power cord can incapacitate the business traveler. One short in an ear bud wire can turn a pleasant afternoon of listening to music into irritating static.
Well, John Thorn had had enough of those types of experiences, and so he developed a line of coil cord cases that keep wire tidy and intact both at home and on the road. Thorn just so happens to be a psychologist that works with individuals who have a variety of disabilities; sometimes multiple disabilities.
So he is fully aware how employment options can be limited for these people, as well as how having the opportunity to work can make life matter for these individuals. There is also the added benefit of outsourcing jobs to Americans, as the press release published on the San Francisco Chronicle website notes:
Coil was designed to be easily assembled by disabled workers who live in Wyoming, where John Thorn resides. ‘Everything is based in the USA. I was told that I could be more profitable by manufacturing offshore, but Coil is about much more than being cheap to produce. We provide jobs, and our packaging minimally impacts the environment. We are very conscientious about how Coil is brought to market.’
Thorn’s business brings to mind this December post about the Recycling Association of Minnesota’s Christmas lights program, which employs people with disabilities to untangle the strands and remove the bulbs in preparation for recycling. Any kind of manual labor tasks can be performed reliably and successfully by individuals with disabilities, keeping jobs in America and giving these people a chance to live their life more independently.
It’s good to see the employment of people with disabilities is the focus of Coil’s press release, as there is only one paragraph devoted to this component of the business at the end of the “About” section of the company website. With studies showing that 87% of the Americans preferring to purchase products from companies that hire people with disabilities, and the U.S. Census Bureau reporting (PDF) that people with disabilities themselves representing $1 trillion in discretionary spending, Thorn’s cord solutions could become as ubiquitous as the electronic devices they were designed for.
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Image by XWRN, used under its Creative Commons license.