Here, Dr. Kirk Adams explains why he and Aaron Di Blasi are spending an evening in December with the Blind Professionals Network, and why he believes building a public presence is one of the most practical career moves a blind professional can make. He opens where his own story started: in 1983, fresh out of Whitman College, watching phone interviews go beautifully and in-person interviews collapse, until he began disclosing his blindness in the cover letter and the phone calls stopped altogether. What he lacked, and what almost nobody had then, was a body of published work that could enter a room ahead of him. That problem, he argues, is now solvable for almost nothing, and the point of a personal brand is not self-promotion at all. It is evidence: something a hiring manager or a board chair can read before they ever meet you, which changes the opening question from whether a blind person can do the job to what this particular person thinks about the problem at hand.
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Welcome to the Dr. Kirk Adams Website. Here you’ll discover insightful content focused on disability inclusion, accessibility, and leadership.
Dr. Kirk Adams, a lifelong advocate for the blind and visually impaired, shares his expertise on creating an inclusive world where everyone can thrive.
As the former CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, Dr. Adams brings decades of experience working with industry leaders, nonprofits, and policymakers to advance accessibility.
He offers key insights into disability employment, digital accessibility, and innovative projects that foster systemic change. Whether you're an advocate, educator, or someone passionate about equity, you’ll find valuable discussions and strategies to make an impact.
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In this warm episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Stephanie D. Sanders, a transformational motivational speaker and performer from Lakeland, Florida, who first wrote to him years ago when he was president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, and who later met him in person at the National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando. Stephanie tells her story from the beginning: legally blind in one eye since birth but undiagnosed until kindergarten, treated through the University of Florida, and raised as the youngest of three by a mother who did not yet know why her daughter kept giving the wrong answer. She describes refusing to let her vision define her, the sports and cheerleading years, the basketball injury that ended her track-and-field and Olympic hopes, and the pivot that followed into sports announcing, a mass communications degree in radio, television and film production, and a career in entertainment.
Leave a CommentIn this warm and candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Jeff Wissel, Vice President, Accessibility at Aira, a friend he first met in a Washington, D.C. hotel hallway when the Secret Service cleared a banquet room for Secretary Elaine Chao. Kirk opens with his own decade as an Aira subscriber: a demonstration at AFB’s New York offices from founder Suman Kanuganti, and the airport navigation that became his most valuable use case. Jeff then traces his own arc, retinitis pigmentosa noticed around age seven, a 28-year career at Fidelity Investments that began before the internet, giving up driving at 34, and years spent covering a non-apparent disability because he had no blind role model and believed he was the only one.
Leave a CommentIn this warm and wide-ranging episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Rachel Antoine, Senior Director of International Operations at Braille Institute, for a conversation about Braille literacy and the programs that sustain it. Kirk opens with his own Braille history, losing his sight at five, learning to read and write Braille from Mrs. Summers at the Oregon State School for the Blind, and depending on Braille books through long hospital stays, then traces his three encounters with Braille Challenge: a regional in Tampa, a 2019 keynote at the Braille Challenge gala, and a return visit in 2026 where he met Rachel. Rachel explains that Braille Challenge has grown from one Southern California regional in 2000 to over 80 regionals worldwide, reaching around 2,200 students a year and over 26,000 since it began, with the competition as the vehicle and Braille literacy as the mission.
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams tells the story of the impossible choice that shaped his career. In 1983, fresh out of Whitman College with a degree in economics, he could either say nothing about his blindness and watch an interview collapse the moment he walked in with a long white cane, or disclose it at the top of his cover letter and stop getting phone interviews altogether. Two bad options, and no third one on offer. He connects that experience directly to “The Courage to Be Human at Work: Vulnerability, Access, and Connection,” a free 90-minute webinar hosted by Disability:IN Washington on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, and led by Linea Johnson, Founder and CEO of The Thrive Shift. Its central question, he writes, is one he recognized on sight: how do we create workplaces where people don’t have to choose between protecting themselves and belonging?
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams introduces Jennifer Bazer, President of the Palmetto Council of the Blind of South Carolina and a newly elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of the Blind, and makes the case for supporting the Council’s Kicking for a Cause online auction, which closes on September 20, 2026. Blind since birth, a social worker by training and a veteran of more than a decade managing large federal workforce programs, Bazer founded the Palmetto Council in 2023 with a deliberately simple aim: to give a newly blind South Carolinian, a family member who does not know where to turn, or anyone looking for a way in “another door they could knock on.”
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams reflects on launching the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on September 1, in a span of days that also brought the deaths of Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, and Gloria Steinem. He writes candidly about his discomfort at honoring three white figures in a piece about a coalition devoted to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging, and he insists that the long struggle for freedom has been led, sustained, and repeatedly rescued by Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, immigrants, workers, and countless others whose names never reach a history book. What he draws from each of the three is a lesson in using one’s gifts in service to others: Parton’s Imagination Library, whose Braille Tales partnership with the American Printing House for the Blind fills his own bookshelf with print-and-braille titles his two-year-old granddaughter brings him with the words “Grandpa, read book with your hands!”; Berry’s insistence that community is a daily practice rather than an abstract idea, the conviction behind Adams’s own philosophy of brightening the corner where you are; and Steinem’s advice to young women to listen to themselves rather than to her, together with her understanding that movements require infrastructure and not merely admired personalities.
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💡 Practical Strategies for Workplace Inclusion and Leadership
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams shares the full recording of the September 1, 2026 public launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, the national membership community created by the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion to help people working in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging move from reactive, isolated survival mode to strategic, sustainable, collective power.
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams announces that the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion went live on September 1, 2026, opened not with a webinar or a panel but with an “Ask Us Anything” hour of questions, frustrations, ideas and lived experience. He explains what the Coalition actually is: a way for members to move from reactive, isolated survival mode to strategic, sustainable, collective power, built on four words, Connect, Learn, Act, Together. He is direct about who it is for, which is everybody, and equally direct that disability inclusion and accessibility are not a side room in it but a dedicated space by design. Inside, he describes three things above all others: BELONG, the peer circles where saying “I am overwhelmed” is met with practical help rather than judgment; CLARITY, a trusted translation layer of plain-language briefings and expert-guided sessions; and POWER, the shared tools, cross-sector strategy and coalition-backed influence that turn isolated effort into coordinated action. In practice that means Ask the Experts office hours, a Member Lounge and Directory, a growing Resource Library, a Rapid Response Hub for the moments that will not wait, legislative and legal updates, podcasts featuring DEIAB voices, and a shared calendar of events worth your time.
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