December 5, 2019 - Jason A. Corning, a deafblind CEO and founder of Three Monkeys Communication LLC, shares his story with us today. He holds a master degree in Information systems from John Hopkins University in DC. Jason used to work for the federal government for eight years and then he set up his own business Three Monkeys Communication. According to Jason, he and his team provides 4 types of services: 1) keynote presentations like he did on TEDx Talk last January 2)corporation training which focuses on training business on how to hire more people with disabilities, how to create or provide accessible products and services, user experience. 3) personal coaching, where we do one on one with youths, adults, teachers and interpreters/ssp on how they can improve their quality of life or work on skills and find a new job, and 4) accessibility consulting where we assess a product or service and provide feedback to business on how they can improve the accessibility of their products and services.
Jason does a lot of traveling to provide workshops on Pro-Tactile (PT) and Support Service Provider (SSP). "We also have a YouTube channel where we create and publish videos that shares information with the community about different places to go, tips, and help Deafblind to get an idea of what they can do to enjoy their quality of life. We are trying to develop an app that helps Deafblind find SSP easily but we need the funds and people to help us to put them together."
"Keeping the business under operation with enough funding is one of the biggest challenge. Finding customers who wants more training on how to work with Deafblind people with the appropriate funding is not easy. Other than that getting an ongoing stable contract is a challenge because most training and assessment are short term and unpredictable. We rent two rooms in our home on Airbnb to help us to earn some money to keep the business going. Another barrier and challenge is finding reliable SSP who have good attitude, talent with PT, and is a good match by personality. He spent a lot of time training new SSP and when he goes on international travel, they aren't a good fit and they aren't able to provide the local experience as he could from a person with similar age and activities preference." says Jason.
When Jason was employed with the government it was very frustrating as they didn't provide qualified interpreters that would bring effective communication which caused a lot of stress and drama. This led him to decide to set up his consulting company to help resolve this issue rather than fighting with people all the time. His husband is Asian and he wanted him to set up programs in Asia so they decide to use the 3 Monkeys from Japan to help attract more customers and it's a name that people can remember.
Our very own Minnesotan Patrick Vellia is the Chief Accessibility Officer for Three Monkeys Communication.
Jason imparts this advice: “Think positive, anything is possible if you could make them happen. Don't just sit around and complain about something, just be proactive and start something new and help others. Don't get upset with others or get frustrated easily because it's not the same person that is doing the same thing to you, they might not understand or have been educated. Just take the time in a nice and calm way to explain to people how you feel, and try to understand why they react that way. In some situation they have a good reason and we may take responsibility to change our part to make thing better for both parties.”
The #CanDoAnything campaign showcases people who are deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing at work, giving them an opportunity to share what they do at their jobs and explain how communication access works for them. This campaign shows what our community can do, which is anything!
