Welcome to SMG eNEWS™
2008, May 15th

The Solutions Marketing Group’s eNews is a bi-monthly communiqué that connects business to the market of people with disabilities.

Profiles in Excellence
Profiles in Excellence is a monthly article, published by SMG, that features companies and organizations that demonstrate leadership in accessibility, employment, customer service and marketing to the nation's 54 million Americans with Disabilities.

TecAccess: Modeling Solutions
By Joan Leotta

Is it possible to run a successful business, employ mostly people with disabilities, and in so doing possibly benefit the US economy? The multi-million dollar IT and personnel solutions company TecAccess tries to do just that. By providing accessible technology programs, disability employment services, and marketing solutions on an outsource basis, TecAccess has become a financial success. By employing persons with disabilities ranging from mild to severe, the company models equal employment for all abilities. And by allowing disabled technology pros to stay in their accessible homes to get their work done, the firm eases the burden of retrofitting office buildings for disability access while still including employees with disabilities in the workforce....
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Featured Article
Special to Disability-Marketing.com

“Bullycide in America – Children with Disabilities” By Joyce Bender, President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services

Choosing suicide over dealing with bullies in school is a terrible choice many young people are making today; a great percentage of the victims are children with disabilities. The word bullycide describes children who commit suicide to avoid one more day of bullying. It is absolutely horrifying. In 1967, an 11 year old child was the first documented case of committing Bullycide in the UK....
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Accessibility
sponsored by Universal Design Newsletter

New Home for a Decorated Marine
From "Abilities Buzz" E-newsletter

Daniel Gilyeat is a decorated marine who served two tours in Iraq, during which he lost most of his left leg when a bomb hit his truck. Not long after, his marriage ended, and he became a single father to four children. He is now struggling to take care of his family in a house that requires him to use a wheelchair, despite his ability to walk with a prosthetic leg. In a recent two-hour episode of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" Ty Pennington and his team rebuild the Gilyeats' Kansas City, Kan., home while sending the family on vacation to Los Angeles and a surprise concert and meeting with Miley Cyrus....
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Customer Service
sponsored by W.C. Duke Associates, Inc.

Sprint’s Hard of Hearing Customers Benefit From New and Free Web-Based Solution Sprint

Sprint released Sprint WebCapTel®, a new free web-based service that allows a person who can speak but has challenges hearing over the phone, to read word-for-word captions of their calls on a web browser. This new service is expected to help an estimated 23 million Americans with hearing loss, who may face challenges hearing over the telephone....
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Employment

Wal-Mart to Pay $300,000 to Rejected Job Applicant With Disability
By U.S. EEOC

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will pay $300,000 to a Hardin, Mo., man to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC alleged that Wal-Mart refused to hire Steve Bradley, who has cerebral palsy and uses crutches or a wheelchair for mobility, when he applied for employment at its Richmond, Mo., store in 2001...
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News & Announcements

Database of More Than 1,700 Job Candidates With Disabilities to Be Made Available Free of Charge to Employers
U.S. Dept of Labor

National Council on Disability Recommends Improving Federal Data Describing the Status of Americans with Disabilities
By National Council on Disability

CMS Rule Could Mean Thousands More Get Community-Based Services
By National Spinal Cord Injury Association

Social Security Administration's Ticket to Work Program Being Revamped

Insurers Faulted for Overloading Social Security
By The New York Times (nytimes.com)