Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion: October 31, 2024: Jeremy Grandstaff

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

In this episode of Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, Dr. Kirk Adams and his guest, Jeremy Grandstaff, dive into a powerful discussion on disability inclusion and its transformative impact on businesses. Broadcasting from his Seattle home office, Dr. Adams begins with an intimate account of his personal journey — from losing his sight at age five to becoming a leading advocate for accessibility. His early experiences, from mastering Braille to being the only blind student in mainstream education, laid the foundation for his resilience and passion for inclusion. But this episode isn't just about Dr. Adams.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00

Music.

00:09

Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams,

00:37

hello, everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in sunny Seattle, Washington. And welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through disability inclusion. And as you know, every month I have a wonderful guest host. This month, it is Jeremy grand staff, you'll hear more, a lot more from Jeremy in a bit, but Jeremy, could you please say hello?

01:07

Well, hello, Dr Kirk, it's such an honor to be with you and and to be part of your space. I just appreciate such a great opportunity to collaborate with you on many levels, but this is definitely one of the highlights of my week. So thank you for having me on great and I'm going to, I'm going to give you a little bit of background about me, in case you don't know me yet, and I'll keep it brief, I promise. And then we'll, we'll talk to Jeremy at some length

01:39

about disability inclusion, employment of people who are blind, the importance of accessibility, and his very interesting life story as well. And then we'll let you know how you can get in touch with me, how you can get in touch with Jeremy, and we'll open it up for any questions, comments, any of you may have who are joined with us here live today. You're watching the recording. We'll let you know how to get in touch with us. So again, I'm Dr KURT ADAMS. I am a blind person. Have been since age five, when my retins Both detached. I was in kindergarten and I went to a school for blind children, State of Oregon, Oregon State School for the Blind. First, second, third grade had a wonderful teacher named Mrs. Summers who taught me how to read Braille, which opened up my world and write Braille. Then I had a great O and M instructor, Mr. Pearson, who taught me how to travel confidently and independently with a long white cane. Wasn't it wasn't very long when I was six years old, but I was, I was using a cane and then learned how to type on a typewriter. Today, it would be called keyboarding, but the model then

02:57

blind kids and deaf kids went to state residential schools primarily and learn the skills of disability to the point where we could then go to public school in our hometown, our neighborhood. So I started that in fourth grade, went all the way on through school, lived in small towns here in the Pacific Northwest, was always the only blind student in all of my classes after I left the school for the blind so through through elementary, middle school, high school, college masters, PhD, always the only blind person. So I've had that experience. Also had the experience of graduating from college with great academic credentials, phi, beta, kappa, cum laude, four point by econ degree, then running into those barriers to employment that so many of us significant disabilities face. I've had that experience also through many twists, through many twists and turns.

04:01

Became the president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, the social enterprise employing about 250 people who are blind and deaf blind, and a variety of businesses, including aerospace manufacturing, making parts for all the Boeing aircraft later was privileged to step into that same president and CE role at the American Foundation for the Blind, which is the most iconic organization in the blindness field. Helen Keller was the brand ambassador there for 45 years. And when I moved from Seattle to New York, and we're in those offices at AFB, I could walk down the hall and sit at Helen Keller's desk, play with her typewriter if I ever needed a shot of inspiration. So I've, I've had the opportunity to be a frustrated person with a disability seeking employment, an opportunity.

05:00

To be a successfully employed person with a disability in corporate America. I was in banking and finance for 10 years, and then an opportunity to be the employer of

05:12

hundreds of people who are blind and deaf blind. And so I have, I have good 360 degree views of employment for people who are blind, and I formalized that experience by pursuing and earning a PhD in leadership and change through Antioch University. And my scholarly focus was on employment of people who are blind. My dissertation is called journeys through rough country, an ethnographic study of blind adults successfully employed in American corporations. And no, I just, I just had it brailled and hard copy Braille. I've had the electronic file since 2019 when I completed but I just started rereading it, and it's pretty good. I'm pretty I'm pretty happy with the first 25 pages I've read this week.

06:10

I set up a consulting practice a little over two years ago when I made the change from leading the American Foundation for the Blind, relocated from the Washington, DC area back to Seattle, very much driven by my

06:27

commitment to family. My wife and I are joyous grandparents. We have a 232,

06:34

month old grandson, eight month old granddaughter. They live a mile away from us here in Seattle. So quite, quite a lifestyle change happened a couple of years ago, I set up a consulting practice, primarily to work with companies who are interested in winning the fierce competition for talent by expanding their thinking around diversity, equity and inclusion, to embrace intentional employment of people with disabilities, in particular people who are blind, and having those conversations about the fact that only 35% of us significant disabilities are in the workforce, there are many people who are eager to work, looking for those opportunities, have pursued education and training and may not have had the chance to get that foot on the career ladder, and we talk about how people develop talent and skills, and that we develop mastery through overcoming challenges and the lived experience of disability gives us ample opportunity to face and overcome challenges on a very regular basis, which leads to development of resilience and perseverance, creative problem solving,

07:57

the ability to analyze and manage risk, the ability to put together diverse teams and work with teams as we're all interdependent on one another, and good communication skills, I think, which are necessary we are to not only survive, but thrive as people with disabilities And in these environments that were not surprisingly, created primarily to fit people without disabilities, and as we strive to create a good person, a fit between ourselves and the environment, the creativity that goes along with that.

08:35

So I've been working directly with companies. I will note one partnership with a cyber security company called Nova coast, we've developed a fabulous program to launch blind people into cyber security careers.

08:51

You can find that it's called the apex program. You can find that at WWW dot the apex program.com

09:00

and it's a 10 week virtual training that leads to certification network plus and security plus certifications, and then opportunities to interview with employers who are desperately seeking qualified, certified

09:16

Cyber Security employees. As on any given day, there are 755,000

09:22

open cybersecurity jobs in our country, and we're set up with vocational rehabilitation in 20 states now. So if anyone listening is interested in cybersecurity careers,

09:37

please visit www dot the apex program.com,

09:41

another aspect of my consulting business which is really interesting is working with startup companies that are seeking to be very innovative and using technology in order to create a more inclusive world for people with disabilities. When I was a.

10:00

Uh, in the President's CEO role at the American Foundation for the Blind, I was quite regularly contacted by companies who thought they had a great idea of some sort of technological innovation that would be helpful to people who are blind. Sometimes these were well intended people who were seeking to solve a problem that really didn't really exist. Sometimes they were seeking to solve a problem for which there was already a solution, and sometimes they had a pretty cool, new, innovative idea. And inevitably, they were all seeking funding and wanting to know if AFD could provide startup funding. And I was

10:46

easy, easily, quickly able to say, No, we don't do that.

10:52

But as I shifted into an entrepreneurial space myself, with my company, which is called innovative impact LLC, I continued to be contacted by by innovative people wanting to do good in the world

11:12

through scaling their companies, and I have found myself now an advisor To and a shareholder in four different companies, one of which is called curb cut OS. And curb cut OS is one of several intersections between myself and Mr. Grand staff Jeremy, who's who's on the call. So

11:42

a mirror, a tangled web we weave sometimes. So I met Jeremy at an NFB conference. He had his own management consulting business at that time, and I was fairly new at the American Foundation for the Blind. I was working to restructure things, streamline, get focused, moving to a systems change model

12:09

focusing on public policy and research to influence decision makers, rather than direct service to people who are blind their families and professionals in the field. So quite, quite a cultural transformational shift I was working with the board and staff to manage

12:27

and Jeremy had such excellent expertise and experience in working with leadership teams that I engaged Jeremy specifically to work with my senior leadership team to structure how we would meet, how we would engage with one another,

12:47

the cadence of meetings, the content, the structures. And he was so super helpful to me and helping move things forward. And I'm proud of what was accomplished during my six years at AFB, and it is indeed a systems change organization focusing on research and public policy to make big things happen

13:11

in the lives of people who are blind. Jeremy, thank you for the part you played in making that that shift

13:21

while I was at AFB, also, one of the things I did was to take a very small consulting activity and work to create a sustainable revenue generating social enterprise around technology consulting. We were small group, we needed to find partners in order to take on large projects, and one of those partners was a company called nebula Media Group, which has been rebranded it is now curb cut OS.

13:58

When I left AFB and started consulting. I reconnected with what is now curb cut. Os they built my website, innovative impact. Dot consulting,

14:13

they laid a vision out to me, which is very exciting around their approach to digital accessibility, which we'll talk about more here in a few minutes,

14:26

their philosophy,

14:29

their vision, to really make changes in the landscape of digital accessibility. And asked if I would like to pitch in, which I happily agreed to do so. I am a strategic advisor to curb cut OS. I am a small shareholder, which is fun.

14:48

And

14:52

as I, as I say, as I reinvigorated my network, I also reached out to Jeremy say, hey.

15:00

Know, you've been in the consulting space. You've been successful at it. I'm starting it. I wanted to reach out and reconnect with Jeremy.

15:09

I introduced him to curb cut OS, and they

15:14

very, very wisely, also engaged Jeremy in a formal way. He's part of the curb cut OS team, so we're back working together again, which is great, and I really want to

15:29

give space here for Jeremy to talk not only about curb cut and his role there, his vision for the organization, but also his own experience. Jeremy is really uniquely positioned as a leader

15:46

in the blindness field, disability inclusion field, I'm I'm keenly interested in leadership as one of the

15:54

the engines for driving significant change, and as most of you probably know the outcomes for people with disabilities are

16:05

are very deplorable. As far as I mentioned, 35% of us are working as opposed to 70% of the general population. Our home ownership was about a 10th of the general population. Million blind people living in poverty in the country, so we need changes and doing more of the same as not getting as where we need to go. So I'm very interested in disruption and innovation and leadership for change, and I'm also very interested in people with the lived experience of disability being in leadership roles where disability inclusion is concerned. And Jeremy has a

16:49

really unique breadth and depth of experience, and now in the position he's he's out with, with curb cut OS, he is in a position to exert that leadership influence and really make some great things happen. So Jeremy, I'm going to turn the floor over to you and listen attentively as you talk, and I may jot down a few questions that I can come back to later. But so glad you're here. Thanks so much. So glad we reconnected and that we're back back in the boat, rowing the same direction.

17:24

Well, Kirk, it's because of this event that I actually have my job today, because that was the first time that I met my boss, Mark pound, and so

17:37

it was extremely humbling

17:41

listening to your introduction.

17:47

I don't know that I actually knew that I made that big of a difference back in our first encounters. And I think I kind of assumed that that you know you were happy, right? But I knew you were happy, but that was absolutely just very humbling, and so thank you so much for that.

18:10

So as Kirk said, my name is Jeremy Grandstaff. I live outside of DC, Washington, DC and Burke, Virginia, with my seeing eye dog, Ozzie, and my partner, Jerry, I have

18:25

an interesting

18:27

I think sometimes we're always so close to our life story Kirk that we just don't actually start to look at it or think about it.

18:38

But I grew up in a small town in mid west in the Midwest, in Ohio called Marengo, Ohio. I think there were maybe 300 people in my town,

18:52

and

18:53

I don't think about that time of my life a lot. My sister has recently launched a website called My brothers are blind, the letter R blind.com

19:04

where she's kind of on her own journey as a sighted sibling of three blind brothers. And one of the things that she did recently, Kirk was interview all three of us, and it kind of created this reflection of where did we start, and how did we end up where we all are today?

19:27

So some key pieces that I tend to highlight

19:32

at the age of five. So again, I had been blind since birth. I have levers congenital and morosses, and and so I would actually say, probably for the first I believe it was year of my life, my parents weren't really sure what was going on, right? This is 1976

19:51

they had someone out to the house from

19:55

what is now BVI, or Department of digital.

20:00

For the visually impaired. I don't know what it was called back then, but a lady came out to the house, and the way the story is told to me, I was two years old, and

20:12

my parents were told that I would be better off being placed in an institution, and that that was going to be my life. And

20:22

as I said, the way the story was told to me, my dad will just say politely, though I'm not sure it was that politely told them that they might as well get the heck off of his property, because that was not going to be the life that his kid had. And so I have to actually give pay homage to my parents, right? Because they really took this approach that they were going to do whatever it took for me to be quote, unquote normal. And obviously we don't. I don't like using that phrase today, but that's how they looked at it, right? They just wanted me to be able to have the same life that everybody would have if they could see.

21:05

So at the age of five, I was riding my bicycle around our farm and riding up and down the gravel road and scraping my fingers on mailboxes, as I would, you know, take them out on my way by at the

21:19

I know, right

21:22

at the age of seven, I used to run barrels, which is a horse racing activity, and my dad and I developed

21:34

the situation where there were three barrels, and on the top of each barrel would be a can, And in the can was a beeper, and the beepers had different frequencies, and that's how I would know where they were, and so I would run the barrels. At the age of 10, I came up from ossb, Ohio State School for the Blind, where I also, by the way, Kirk, got a very good foundation in Braille and those type of things remind me one day, Kirk, to tell you about the the note that I typed that was supposed to be my teacher telling the librarian I could do something, but I typed it and signed it, Mrs. Perano, like that would be how a teacher would write a note to the librarian. Thought I would get away with that. But at the age of 10, I came up to public school, and at this point, we're talking 1970 I'm sorry, 1986 87 and

22:31

one of the distinct memories that I have in that whole process was sitting in a room with all these teachers and my parents, I later found out it was my IEP, and I am telling them how they are going to accommodate me as a student. Now mind you, at that particular time, my school system was extremely small, so there was no process in place for somebody. I think they called it back then mainstreaming right up into public school, and so the teachers had no idea what to do, and my job was to really take a step back and look at how could What did I need, and how could I ask for the things that I need. And so I distinctly remember

23:22

in that meeting, the teacher asking my parents about something that I would need, and my mom looked at me and said, I don't know why you're asking me. I'm not the one who needs it. Why don't you ask him? And so from a very early age, my parents taught me that my job was to advocate for myself. They also taught me, and my dad hates when I talk about it this way, but there was a role in my house. If you were going to fail, it better be the most spectacular failure you've ever had. Now I'd say it joking like that, but really, what my dad meant was, if it doesn't work and you fail, whatever failure may be, you better be able to look him in the eye. And yes, as a blind person, I was expected to still look my parents in the eye when they were talking to me, or at least look in their direction, right? But my dad would say, you better be able to look me in the eye and tell me that you did everything you could in order to prevent that from being a failure. There was not an acceptable response in my house of I can't do that because I'm blind. That just was not acceptable, and that's at the foundation for most of my life now it also created a little bit of a perfectionist in me, but that's a whole different that's a whole different ball game. Kirk,

24:48

so you know the to complete this tour, if you will, through my life story. I went to college in Bowling Green, I got my my bachelor's degree, and.

25:00

Management Information Systems and international business. My first job, right out of school was working for IBM Global Services. I was promoted to management in about a year of starting my job. So I had 50 people that reported to me, and I was 23 or 24 years old. It was empowering, scary,

25:26

and never once did I ever

25:31

have conversations

25:35

with my boss that were, I can't see, I can't do that, right? It was always, I remember we used to use something. I don't remember exactly what it was called in IBM, but was a archaic mainframe system, one of the most inaccessible things I've ever seen, and I didn't want to cause a problem for IBM, so I just figured out how to work around it. And that's kind of always been my philosophy. I worked at IBM, I ran my own business as a management consultant for 20 years. By the way, when you're running your own business, it's really easy to decide, I'm the owner of the company, so therefore we're only going to use things that are accessible, right? But I remember my business partner coming to me and being like, let's start using Google Docs, because he loved it, and we could collaborate on it. And at first, that was extremely scary to me. But you know what? I figured out how to use it. I put myself in a position where it was my job to figure out how to work with the tools that I had.

26:40

I did work for a management consulting company for a little bit.

26:46

One of the things that I actually think about when I think about that experience,

26:54

there was a software that we used. I'm not going to mention the name, because I don't want to embarrass the company,

27:01

but Kirk, I have to tell you, in the three years that I worked for the consulting company I worked for

27:07

all three years I spent fighting a battle with this vendor, because my job depended on me doing that job using their software that wasn't accessible at all. And I remember one time getting to the point where I had absolutely just I was in a showstop situation,

27:32

and I emailed the vendor who I'd been trying to get a meeting with, and I was like, I said, if you don't give me a meeting with you, my next step is to either call a lawyer or publicly embarrass you on Facebook and LinkedIn. And I actually got scolded by the director of HR because I talked to a vendor that way,

27:52

and then I was told, you better figure out how to use it, or I can find somebody else to do the job. Now we can get into the legalities of that, because I'm sure that there are some. But when you are working for a company, you had actually mentioned this in your opening Kirk, when you're working for a company and you need the job, you don't have the luxury of saying, well, I'll just sue you,

28:18

right? And I needed my family needed to eat. We needed to have money coming in and money on the table. So

28:27

I figured out how to work with it, and I'm going to tell you how I got that vendor to meet with me. Is I did a zoom call with myself. I shared my jaws and I shared the screen, and I showed them exactly what was happening for me.

28:47

And then I said, Please don't make me post this publicly. And I had that meeting in about 10 seconds. I'm not kidding. It was the quickest. Well, okay, we'll say 10 minutes, but

28:59

and so I understand what it's like. I well, I'll complete that part of my life by also saying,

29:08

after working for that company for three years, I was also told that I wasn't able to get a promotion. And the big driver in that

29:19

was that, as a blind person, they did not feel I would ever be able to do the job that a sighted person could do.

29:28

And I will own for you and all the people listening to your amazing live stream that I know in my life, I've been discriminated against in many, ways, but never before did someone actually make it so blunt

29:48

and on video, and it just rocked me,

29:54

and it it rocked my world

29:58

and and I don't even know that.

30:00

I've ever told you this story, Kirk, but I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking to myself, how could I have given three years to this company? What was I thinking?

30:14

And I instead of getting down on myself and letting that defeat me,

30:21

I walked into my office, the same one I'm sitting in now,

30:26

and I wrote down on a piece of paper. Mind you, by the way, I couldn't read what I wrote, right, but I took a pen and paper and I wrote down, Today is April 1, on June 3, June 18, which happened to me, my birthday. I will no longer work for people who do not value me and the expertise and the wisdom that I can bring their company.

30:47

And Kirk, I sat down and I found 10 events, one of which was your event. And I said, wow, these events looked interesting. I think I can learn something by going to these. And it is because I came to your event that three months later, on June 17, one day before my birthday, I started working for curb cut OS and, well, there you go,

31:17

monthly live stream. That's right. And I think it's also, you know, it kind of comes back to this, like

31:27

I talk about it as confidence or advocating for yourself, but really what it comes down to is this, I had a choice to make that day. I could feel bad for myself. I could feel bad that I was discriminated against so blatant, I could feel bad for them, and the way that to this day, I'm still not sure, though maybe they do know now that it was not the right thing to do, but instead, I chose to say, No way. This is not going to stop me, and this is where I'm going to go, and I have something to bring to the world. And I think as people with disabilities, it's really critical to learn

32:12

that part of your job is to educate. And that's just how it is. We can be upset at that, about that, but truthfully, if someone is going to let us, and yes, let's use the word intentionally, let us educate them,

32:30

then that also means that they're open to learning. And if someone's open to learning

32:39

and you teach them, then they just become your partner advocate. But if you're not advocating for yourself, you can't expect them to advocate for you as well, right? So,

32:55

so curb cut and stop me anytime but curb cut OS, we're digital accessibility company. We are doing for

33:09

the digital accessibility field and digital accessibility world for our clients, what the curb cut effect did for physical

33:21

accessibility. And that is something that I, you know, I like to tell people. For the first time in my life, me being a blind person,

33:31

it actually opens doors to that conversation. You know, one of the things that I've heard you and other people talk about before is there's over 1.6 billion people in the world who have a disability. They leave 12 point some trillion dollars a year in shopping carts that are unaccessible because they cannot buy from them. Now that's an astronomical number, but let me make it real for everybody who's listening. As a blind person, I have been buying things online for over 30 years, and the last time I did the math, I have left $260,000

34:15

of my money sitting in a shopping cart somewhere because I couldn't complete the buying process, and instead, I would take my business elsewhere. So when it comes right down to it, disability, inclusion, yep, it's about doing the right thing. Yep, it's about creating opportunities for everybody, no matter if they have a seen or an unseen disability. But when you get right down to it as a company, it's about not losing business to other companies. It's about being able to capture more market share, because people with disabilities, whether they can be seen or unseen, are now able to buy from you. And that is what I love about what we do, we do auditing, we do remediation, we do.

35:00

Systems maturity modeling, we do document remediation, we've got SaaS solutions called the accessible UX platform. We've just launched our partnership. My understanding is a Kirk that you played an extremely amazing role in that with Ipsos, marketing, leading marketing research firm, and we offer something called a three way accessible UX audit, but very bluntly, it's an automated audit, a manual audit,

35:38

and then also a user flow audit,

35:42

or an audit of user experience. And when I talk about this, what I love to say to people is this,

35:50

if you're going to look at the user experience that someone has when they come to your website or they use your application, and you don't first check as well to see if there's an accessibility problem for people to be able to access it, then the user experience is never going to be quite as great as you want it to be, right? And so that's a little bit about me.

36:16

A couple questions. Oh, sure, absolutely yes. Go ahead,

36:22

first, not a question, but just comment. So the curb cut effect, for those who don't know the curb cut is the ramp that leads from the sidewalk into the street. Those weren't really around till the mid 70s, when our brothers and sisters who are wheelchair users demanded that the regulations requiring them be enforced, and they occupied the Federal Health,

36:50

Education and Welfare building in San Francisco for almost a month. They did

36:56

nonviolent protests in Washington, DC, and there's a great documentary called crip camp that talks about that, the Netflix documentary that you can find, I highly, highly recommend it.

37:10

So I'm quite you mentioned your sister

37:13

with three blind brothers. Bless her,

37:18

where were you in the birth order? I'm just curious, were you the trail blazer for your other two blind brothers? Out of that work? That's a great question. I want to take a step back for 10 seconds before that though Kirk, because I love the curb cut effect, I absolutely do, and I'm going to own for you, my friend. I did not know what exactly that was until you actually explained that before. And what a moving picture. And what I love about this and building the point being now that recent research study half a percent of the use of Curb cuts is by people in wheelchairs now, so it's

38:02

that cyclist skateboarders, parents with strollers, people grocery carts, people with roller bags. Everyone uses them

38:13

well. And so before I answer your question on the birth order, one of the things that I also like to highlight right is three years ago, during the pandemic, me and my husband Jerry started watching the Netflix Netflix series The Crown amazing. And we got through two or three episodes, and Jerry looks at me, and he goes, I can't watch this anymore with you. I was like, why? And he's like, Honey, it is too much information on the screen. There's too much happening in the background. I've got to tell you, too much. It's exhausting me. I can't keep up with this. And I have to tell you, Kirk, I came late to the audio description thing. It just I had thought not to be seen as a blind person, so I didn't want somebody telling me what was on screen. I'll figure it out right. Very stubborn attitude.

39:08

And I remember Jerry saying to me, why don't we just turn on the audio description? And I'm like, Okay, fine. We'll do it just for this one show. Because I was hooked on the ground. I wanted to watch it right,

39:18

you should know. And just so Kirk gets the visual on this. For anybody who's saying I'm picking up my phone and I'm acting like I'm scrolling through my phone. My house now has audio description on on every TV. And it is not just so Jeremy knows what's happening on the screen. It is so that my loving partner jerry can look down at his phone and scroll through his reels while we're watching TV and not have to, you know, be able to be told what's on the screen and not have to watch it. So, as you're saying, we designed audio description for people that are blind. The added benefit is now sighted people don't have to constantly look at their screen.

40:00

Right, right, and I'll yeah, and I'll throw it closed captioning was created by the deaf, deafness community. It was in the

40:08

communications and visual Accessibility Act of 2010 the CVAA, that certain amount of programming was required to have closed captioning. Now over 50% of the use of closed captioning is by hearing people, because they can track the dialog just what you're saying a noisy Sports Bar, they can read what the announcers are saying or

40:32

doing household chores, glance up, catch the dialog if they missed something. So that's another curb cut

40:40

example. And yeah, the big one in 1948

40:45

Robert Irwin, who is blind. He was the president of the American Foundation for the Blind. At that time, was interviewed in the New York Times about talking books, which were created by AFD and Helen Keller and Eleanor Roosevelt and the gang to record books for blind people on a records. And

41:05

Robert Irwin said the use of talking books will be very limited, because there won't be a case in which a sighted person would ever want to listen to a book. So it's

41:18

interesting, right? Because then we have, I think when you say that, and I've heard you say that before, I always think of Jerry, who he doesn't read anything. He well, he obviously he reads stuff, but he doesn't read a book. He listens to it on Audible. That's what he does, right? I was the first born, so my parents, I one of the things that I want to encourage you to do and

41:42

I hope this is okay, Kirk, but definitely go check out my sister's blog and her journey. It is. She did an interview with all three of us brothers. She also interviewed my parents, and she let me and my little brother Corey, interview her on her journey. And it was actually, it's been really neat to watch her go through that journey. You know, she had to, like, learn not to post things that didn't have alt tags, if you're going to be talking about blindness, right? And, and, and that kind of alignment or congruence, as you and I have been trained to call it,

42:22

but Integris, you know, action.

42:26

But one of the things that I distinctly remember hearing my parents say, and I think the sister, my sister's journey, has really allowed us as a family to kind of take a step back right and look at it all. I was the first born. My parents didn't have any idea what to do, and the state told him to put me in an institution. So that was never going to fly for them. And so I remember my dad telling me at a very young age, you have to be smart. He's like, you're not you're not going to make it in athletics. You're not going to be able to do that and be, you know, a successful football star, baseball star, right? And he and that's what my dad knew, right? And so he said, even though he knew I was going to end up smarter than him, he needed me to be smart, because the only way I was going to be able to move away from Marengo, Ohio to a city that had a transportation system that I could be independent, which was going to make me know I was a productive member of society, was to be smart, and so I remember like being a kid in geometry and my dad, every day, would sit down and draw out the shapes and the pictures in my book, because we couldn't get a book in braille, and he would draw them out, and he would teach them to me. And you know, then I also remember the you think you're smart conversations, right, which are always fun too.

44:04

There's a couple things that I wanted to quickly touch on, very quickly before I stop talking, just as starting points. I think especially since you are very focused on disability inclusion and employment,

44:21

you know, again, helping people feel comfortable. Sometimes we use that word I like to use, you know, giving people the right to educate me as a recruiter on what they need. It was really simple, and I implemented this when I was a recruiter for my previous job. Um,

44:42

every time I'd call to schedule an interview with someone, or every time that someone would go to schedule an interview, I would ask the question, is there anything that is going to help you be able to more fully participate throughout the interview process?

45:00

Process,

45:01

and what I distinctly remember is one conversation where I asked that question, and the person was on the phone with me, and they go, I don't even know what that would look like. I mean, I'm fine. I I, you know, I've got some ADHD, so maybe if you could send me interview questions in advance, so that I could actually know what I'm answering.

45:26

But had I not asked that question

45:30

integral,

45:32

I would have never opened the door for them to feel the comfort in saying. I don't even know what accommodations are, but this is me, and I also remember them saying, you know, no one's ever asked me that before. That makes me know that your company really cares about its employees. So we had the perception thing that would come out of that, and that's definitely part of it. Go ahead, I have two more questions for I want to ask one, and then we'll pause and let people know how they can get in touch with each of us.

46:12

And then I'll ask the other so the first one,

46:16

what you described

46:19

about working around and being at IBM and accessible mainframe and trying to figure, needing to figure it out

46:26

tools that weren't accessible and you figured it out.

46:30

You know, that's

46:33

resonates with me around having strong internal locus of control, which means you believe in your bones, you can figure stuff out, you can make, make your way. You can get it done.

46:45

When I did my dissertation work and interviewed blind adults successfully employed in large companies, they all shared that. And I think I have that. I think I got it

46:58

from my family and also the School for the Blind, where I was with other 120 other blind kids, and they had us backpacking the Three Sisters wilderness area and horse camping and

47:10

making igloos up on Mount Hood and in the tide pools on the Oregon coast, searching for sea creatures and, you know, things so and you know You were riding your bike on the ground road. I was climbing trees and building tree forts and

47:26

floating, floating down the creek on a log and doing all this stuff I would never let my kids do because it was crazily unsafe. But

47:35

anyway,

47:38

you and I were both blind as very young children, and there was no question, does this kid need to learn braille? Does this kid need to learn how to use a cane? Does this kid need these skills? But were the exceptions only something 10, 15% of us are totally blind. A lot of kids have some usable vision. There's a lot of question around whether or not they need blindness skills. Do they need Braille? Can they use magnification now? Can they just listen to it? People become blind later in life.

48:13

Not everyone had parents like ours. Dad set you up with barrels, with beepers.

48:20

My parents quit their jobs so they could move to another state so I could go to a better school for blind kids. So for those people who didn't have those gifts given to them, of those experiences that establish that strong internal locus of control, as far as building confidence, kind of building that resilience muscle. Any thoughts for for people who are listening, who are either blind, newly experiencing, progressive vision loss, have someone in their family

48:57

who they feel could use a shot of confidence? Any any little steps you would recommend that people think about, gosh, that's such a loaded question, right? I mean, because, first of all, to your point,

49:12

I was an extremely privileged person,

49:16

right? I just have to own that.

49:21

And and before i di further into this Kirk, I have to tell you, I did something the other day that I never in a million years that I would do. I chose when I went to an immersion weekend for an organization that I'm with last week, and

49:39

I chose to leave my seeing eye dog at home. Now my cane skills are probably not as great as yours. I've had a seeing eye dog since I was 18, but one of the things that I've learned over the last eight to 10 years is that I needed to make sure that I didn't let my cane skills go just in case, right?

49:57

Kirk, I'm proud to tell you.

50:00

That I took 42nd street in New York City, from Eighth Street all the way over to Times Square, and I did it with my cane. And had you asked me six years ago if I would ever do that, I would have told you you were absolutely crazy. I know exactly that stretch of 42nd

50:21

street of independent travel. I came out of the Port Authority, and I was like, What in God's name was I thinking?

50:29

But

50:31

to your point,

50:34

and I have a friend of mine who's actually going through this very thing. So the first thing is, you gotta ask questions you're not there is no question. There's always the phrase, there's no question that's too stupid. I don't like that because that assumes that we would even regard ourselves as stupid. I like to say there's no question not worth exploring,

50:58

even if the answer is, I can't help you. Then say, Do you know someone who can right? My friend that is losing his sight? I love him. I love him with integrity. I love him with all of the heart and soul that I have. But one of the things that I am really struggling with him on is he has not fully lost his sight, but he's starting to lose his sight. And so he keeps putting off the conversation around, what is technology look for me look like when I lose my sight? What is Kane skills look like. And so one of the things that I've been trying to help him understand

51:47

is that if he starts to explore the tools that he can use 10 years from now today, it's going to be much easier for him to make that transition, because he will already be familiar with those tools. And so I think that's the first piece. The second piece is learn. Don't be afraid to learn. Look at different ways that you can do things. And there's an irony, by the way I would tell most of the sighted people that I know to do the same thing, because they will not always have their sight, or they will not always have their legs, or they may not always have their hearing, and so know what's available to you and explore it why you can and not have to be responding to the pressure of not being able to right.

52:48

Surround, yeah, surround yourself with

52:53

all different types of people. You know one thing,

52:59

I think, Kirk, you're going to smile when I do this. But one of the things that I heard someone talking about over the last week

53:09

is this interesting concept that happens when we say, Oh, they're blind. They're just like every other blind person that I know.

53:18

Blind people have just as much diversity, experience and diversity in capabilities as sighted people. And just as there are some sighted people that I love to death and that I would do anything for, I can also tell you that there are some sighted people who really need to embrace themselves and learn and grow and be that growth minded person that is going to transcend their own barriers, whatever those are, right? And I focused a lot on my answer of blind and sighted, but I also think about and and I'm going to own for you. Before I took the job with curb cut, this had never crossed my mind. I feel a little vulnerably dumb for saying that honestly. But

54:13

you think about the number of websites that you go to, and on the homepage, they've got this flashing thing going across a slideshow, and it just keeps flashing and flashing and flashing. If you've got an athletic epileptic disorder, I'm sorry I'm not good at saying that word seizure disorder, you see that and that's going to drive you right into a seizure. Never occurred to me that if your website has too much text, someone with a neuro diversity, um,

54:44

with someone that is neuro diverse will not be able to spend more than three minutes on your website, and you'll lose them. And if your job it let's, you know, take it away from like companies and, um.

55:00

You know, trying to sell to more people. If you're a government agency,

55:05

and I have a neuro diversity disorder, and I go to your website, and there are 17 paragraphs of things that I need to read. I'm sorry your agency cannot serve all the people that you're supposed to serve. And so Jeremy, I recently asked our daughter, Rachel, who's in her mid 30s, what does TLDR mean? You know what it means?

55:30

Too long to read and to God, too long didn't read? Yeah, my, my, so Jerry, who you know? Yeah, Jerry will litter. I'll be like, oh, did you read my post? He's like, Yeah, it was more than three sentences. I couldn't do it frustrates me, right? I'm like, but it was so good. He's like, Yeah, sorry, no, can't do it, right?

55:56

So, so we're this hour has flown by. I want to I do have one more question I want to squeeze in. But before I do, yeah, how can people get in touch with you?

56:08

So first of all, to find out more about what we're doing, you can go to curb cut os.com, that's C R, C U R, B, C, u t, O s.com,

56:18

I would actually recommend maybe putting a slash Ipsos partnership, all one word, IP, s, o, s partnership

56:27

on the end of that, because that's going to take you to the three way audit I was talking about. I'm on LinkedIn,

56:34

so you can always find me by going to linkedin.com/i.

56:38

N, slash, Jeremy Grandstaff, all one word, J, E, R, E, M, y, G, R, A, N, D, S, T, A, F, F. You can also email me at Jeremy G at curb cut, os com, and for those who may need to call or text, you can get a hold of me at the office via phone or text at 202-810-5368, 8105368,

57:04

my job in doing what I do for curb cut is to really look at, how are we building partnerships in order to best serve and engage Our clients, both from, you know, generating new clients, but also looking at creating shared experiences and ecosystem mergers that are going to take what we're doing to next level, and at the same time Kirk take what other companies are doing, and other partners that we have are doing to the next level as well. And so I am open to exploratory conversations at any time. Wonderful, and for me also LinkedIn there every day. Kirk Adams PhD, and I have a website for my consulting practice, innovative impact dot consulting. There's an inquiry form there. I'd love to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, about employment people with disabilities, and that's my that's my question before I open it up.

58:10

So just a quick

58:13

advice, one or two things people might think about if they are a blind or visually impaired person, either seeking employment and running into accessibility issues in the employment process, or in a workplace where they're running into accessibility issues with the productivity tools they're expected to use to do their jobs. I know you counter both of those things. Any, yeah, absolutely, any, any bits of it, of advice that people might consider absolutely there are so many different approaches to what do you do in the in the job market, right? How do you get another job? It's almost overwhelming. I remember when I was actually looking at, how do I get out of my other job? And wound up getting this one. I must have got 17 invite events, invites a day to events where it was telling me what to do

59:10

to get it to get a job and to improve my employment. Piece, I think I'll take the external piece first, right.

59:19

There are organizations. One comes to mind, Penny forward, for example, that as a whole course on how to

59:29

really look at your career, where you want to go, and how to get there. And I think that that's really important. But one of the things that they talk about is, how do you handle discrimination within the hiring process?

59:42

When does it matter? And when do you just see that discrimination as maybe this is not who I want to work for, right? And I think that you have to make a judgment call sometimes on how important is this issue to me for.

1:00:00

How important is it that,

1:00:03

and how certain Am I that I've been discriminated against, right? So let's say I get rejected, and I've went through four interviews and they say, unfortunately, we've decided to pursue a different candidate. It's very difficult for me to be able to say I was discriminated against when I went through four interviews and I got a general rejection, right? I may be able to make a case, but it's hard to make that case, and so it may not be worth my time. Now, in my particular case, I still worked for a company, and they literally said on video, we don't think you can ever do the same job that a blind person can. And I want you to know in full disclosure,

1:00:55

I walked away from that company, I set them up and did my job extremely well. When I say, I set them up, I set them up for success, and did my job extremely well,

1:01:07

and I walked away, and I chose not to pursue legal action. But for me in my life,

1:01:17

that gives me the upper hand, and I'm totally comfortable with that, because I know I did the right thing, and I will always know that, for me, there are going to be times when you're going to need to have a lawsuit. We know that as blind people, as

1:01:34

you know, people who are deaf or obviously what the people in wheelchairs did in order to get the curb cut, sometimes you've got to take those stands, but what you want to do is you want to be strategic, and more importantly, you also want to make sure that taking that stand is not just the right thing to do, to take the stand, but it's The right thing to do for you.

1:02:02

We also live in a different world. Kirk, I was thinking about this, right when I got my job with IBM.

1:02:09

God, I'm embarrassed to say 25 years ago,

1:02:15

that's a little interesting. But when I got my first job with IBM, I did a phone interview with Katie Johnson. I'll never forget her, by the way, Katie Johnson with alternative resources. And I called her up. I had heard this ad, you know, it said, Let alternative resources begin your career. And so I was a snotty little 20 year old, 22 year old. So I called up, and I was like, Hi, Katie. This is Jeremy grand staff, and I hear you're going to begin my career, right? And we start having a conversation. It's on the phone. The blindness never come up. It was never a discussion point. She never asked about it, because how would she know? It isn't like she could look me up on LinkedIn. This is, you know, back when there wasn't social media. She offered me an interview. So I had my parents at the time, because I, you know, was staying at their house. The interview was in Columbus, Ohio, so my parents dropped me off a block away from where her building was. Now, you may say, Well, you didn't know the area. How would you have found it well, the whole concept of me doing that

1:03:24

is I needed to put myself in a place where, while I was independently walking into that job interview. So when I walked in with my seeing eye dog and Katie came out to meet me, you could hear it right. She was like,

1:03:42

Oh, you're Jeremy and a god lover. She did so great. Kurt. She's like, Oh, Why'd she come on back? Let's talk, right? We're having this great conversation. And all of a sudden she, you could tell her, her, her lack of certainty kicked in. And she goes,

1:04:02

um, I have a question that I'm just not sure now, never mind I won't ask it. And I was like, you know, Katie, what you want to ask me is, how am I going to be able to use the ticketing system that you guys are using to log phone calls that I'm going to be answering, and what you really want to know is, is it going to be accessible for me, and am I going to be able to do the job? And I said, tell you what. Let's save that conversation for after you've made the decision that I'm the right person for the job. That way, you don't have to worry about me ever saying you discriminated against me, and I don't have to worry about you making a decision based on whether I can use a ticketing system or not. Why don't you decide whether I'm the right person for the job, and then we'll figure out the logistics after that. And what that actually showed her was,

1:04:58

this does.

1:05:00

Fire of mine,

1:05:02

that I wanted her to hire me, not because I was a blind person, but because I knew I would be able to make that work. And I think to your point,

1:05:16

there are always going to be times that we do have to go above and beyond, you know? And I there was one piece Kirk that I wanted to just quickly touch on, very quick,

1:05:28

the other piece that I want to encourage people to do, and especially like we've come a long way in 25 years, right? If you are having a struggle at work, whether it's accommodation, whether it's a mental health challenge, which is huge right now, whether it's anxiety, whether it's I'm not feeling well, whatever it is, please do justice to The person that you work for and help them, help you by telling them and and I know that I'm going to get a little pushback, I'm sure, from somebody for saying what I'm saying. But if someone uses that situation, someone that you work with uses that situation as a way to punish you or demean you or put you in a bad place. I assure you that their supervisor would like to know that they've done that. And I also assure you that if the company is going to let that happen, my friends, it is not a place that you want to be, and it is not a place that is worthy of you being there. Well, Jeremy, well, in a couple sometime next year, we'll do another we'll do an hour of our self disclosure to transform corporate culture. Oh, I love it. You just touched on it. So exciting. Very exciting. So anyone who's joined us live today have a question or a comment for either Jeremy or myself.

1:07:09

Hearing none I will say thank you, Mr. Grand staff, for your insights and your willingness to share your journey.

1:07:19

Next month,

1:07:22

supercharge your bottom lines for disability inclusion will be not on the last Thursday of the month, because that is Thanksgiving. I will be feasting and watching football and taking a nap, as I hope many of you will be doing. We will be convening on Thursday November 21 at 11am Pacific Time. My guest will be a very innovative company called inno search. I n n o search, and they have standardized, simplified the E commerce shopping experience for people who are blind. It's awesome. We'll talk to them on November 21 thanks, everyone live and watching the recording, get in touch with Jeremy or I, if we could be of any service. Thanks so much. Thank you, Kirk. Appreciate you being so accommodating with your time. Absolutely take good care to be with you. All right,

1:08:19

thank you for listening to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, we hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at WWW dot DRK adams.com,

1:08:32

together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.