Our Why
The deaffriendly team, being Deaf and hard of hearing ourselves, is our “why”. It drives everything we do as a team. Hence, it impacts our daily lives and our future, the future of our community and the future of our Deaf and hard of hearing children.
For decades, “Nothing about us, without us” drove the Deaf Community. But even as disability rights awareness surged, nevertheless, our flagship review site, deaffriendly, took a step further in 2012: Filling a gap in Deaf and hard-of-hearing consumer needs with the crowd-sourced power of the Web.
In 2016, deaffriendly CONSULTING was born from four years of aggregating the true lived experiences of thousands of Deaf and hard of hearing consumers, consequently channeling it into tried-and-true turnkey services. For too long, the consumer experience has been designed only for those who can hear: Customer service phone calls. Spur-of-moment museum tours or matinee shows. Walk-in appointments. You name it.
As deaffriendly surpassed its 4,000th review last year, one thing became clear: Businesses want to be deaf-friendly … but often are lacking proper training. That includes brick and mortar, e-commerce, non-profits, Fortune 500, and more. Missing in many business customer service training is the education and training to serve the estimated 48 million Deaf and hard of hearing consumers in the U.S. Altogether, that’s a lot of buying power being left on the table – an estimated $9 billion, in fact! (Source: April 2018 report “An Undervalued Market: The Purchasing Power of People With Disabilities.”).
Our niche expertise comes from a data-driven, heart-to-heart understanding of what Deaf and hard of hearing consumers want. The time to serve them is now – a commitment that impacts your bottom line for many generations.
Want to learn more about our team? Visit our deaffriendly CONSULTING team page to learn more about who we are!