Category: Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

In this reflective episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Laura Bratton, a professional speaker, author, and coach who lost her sight to an unnamed rod and cone dystrophy diagnosed at age nine and was totally blind by the end of high school. Bratton walks through her academic path from an undergraduate degree in psychology at Arizona State to a Master of Divinity at Princeton, where she was the program’s first blind student and had to build her own self-advocacy playbook around accessible textbooks, testing accommodations, and screen reader workflows. Now an ordained United Methodist pastor, she frames her work around change management and the twin resources she calls grit and gratitude, the subject of her book Harnessing Courage: Overcoming Adversity Through Grit and Gratitude.

In this heartfelt episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Cheryl Mitchell, co-founder and CEO of Access Forge, to discuss Belonging by Design, a new initiative aimed at helping faith-based communities and places of worship become genuinely accessible to people with disabilities. Cheryl traces her journey from volunteering as a reader for the late DC accessibility leader Don Galloway in the mid-1990s, through two decades managing federal disability initiatives in government contracting, to becoming a caregiver for her aging mother, an experience that surfaced everyday accessibility gaps in churches, hotels, and airports. Out of those observations, she and longtime collaborator Mark Bartlett (formerly of AbleGamers) launched Access Forge in 2025 to focus on the cultural, hospitality, and faith sectors she saw lagging furthest behind.

In this warm, wide-ranging episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk reconnects with longtime friend and colleague Anthony “Tony” Candela, a retired vocational rehabilitation professional, author of four books, and prolific essayist, for a far-reaching conversation that travels from the state of the VR system to the shape of a well-lived blind life. They trade notes on what’s changed (and stayed the same) over Tony’s 50-year career in the field, including today’s more holistic, whole-person approach to serving blind consumers, the near-universal acceptance of assistive technology on the job site, and the very real threats now facing the $4-billion federal vocational rehabilitation system as government shutdowns and efforts to dismantle the Department of Education loom. Tony shares his own journey with retinitis pigmentosa, the late-in-life lesson of learning Braille at 34 (and his emphatic advice that kids be taught Braille young), and the first step he recommends for anyone newly navigating blindness: reach out to the consumer organizations, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind, because they will welcome you unconditionally and teach you how to learn.

In this thought-provoking episode of podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Eddie Pate, longtime IDE practitioner, author, speaker, consultant, and fellow ISDI board member, to trace Eddie’s journey from Army brat and All-American Humboldt State football player to senior inclusion, diversity, and equity roles at Microsoft, Avanade, and Amazon, where he ultimately led IDE strategy for a one-million-person worldwide operations organization. Eddie explains why he intentionally leads with the “I” in IDE, framing inclusion as the true engine of sustainable change, and he unpacks his signature “pebbles and ripples” philosophy: small, intentional, daily inclusive behaviors, interrupting the interruption of a woman in a meeting, being deliberate about who sits on an interview loop, expanding “who’s in your kitchen,” and “spending your privilege” to create visibility for others, that compound into lasting cultural and systemic change.

In this deeply reflective episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Claudia Lorant, bestselling author and creator of the Quantum Omni Mindset framework, for a candid conversation about trauma, healing, and transformation. Lorant shares her own history as a survivor of profound abuse and explains how years of therapy, study, and self-experimentation led her to develop a five-pillar framework aimed at helping people move beyond surface-level “positive thinking” and into deeper healing through meditation, subconscious reprogramming, and nervous-system awareness.

In this insightful episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams welcomes Sucheta Narang, founder of Accessible World and creator of Access Trader, an accessible, screen-reader-compatible trading assistant, into a wide-ranging conversation about independence, inclusion, and financial empowerment. Born blind in a traditional North Indian family, Sucheta describes learning early that “waiting for a fix” wasn’t an option, then charts a path through mainstream education, international disability work in India and the UK, and corporate roles where she embedded accessibility at scale, including work with Wipro, Google (Chrome team), and Adobe.

In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with accessibility entrepreneur Mike Calvo, co-founder of Pneuma Solutions, for a wide-ranging conversation that blends personal journey with big-picture systems change. Calvo shares how he navigated vision loss, a nontraditional education and work path, and early tech experimentation to become a longtime “for us, by us” builder in the blindness tech ecosystem, connecting the dots from early assistive tech days to his groundbreaking work at Serotek (including pioneering web-based access tools) and ultimately to launching Pneuma.

In this mission-driven episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with Mark Miller, Founder and CEO of Inclusion Impact Accessibility, for a wide-ranging conversation on what it takes to move accessibility from a one-time “fix” to a durable organizational capability. Mark shares his 13-year path into digital accessibility, from a technology career to learning the craft under early industry pioneers, before helping build the field through work on accessibility maturity models and large-scale consulting, then returning to a “boutique” approach with his own firm so he can meet clients where they are and build pragmatic, customized roadmaps.

In this thought-provoking episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with author, speaker, and boundary expert Sheryl Green for a wide-ranging and deeply human conversation about why boundaries matter, and why so many of us struggle to set them. Green shares her personal journey from forensic psychology and years of animal rescue work to a moment of burnout that became a turning point in her life. That experience led her to study, teach, and ultimately write about boundaries as a practical, compassionate tool for protecting our time, energy, relationships, and sense of self. Together, they unpack concepts like “yes-vomiting,” people-pleasing, and the hidden costs of failing to say no, especially when it comes to emotional and time boundaries.

In this thought-provoking episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk sits down with Professor Samuel J. Levine, law professor at Touro Law Center, Director of the Jewish Law Institute, and founder of Touro’s Disability Rights and Inclusion Project, to explore why advancing disability inclusion requires more than “laws on the books.” Levine shares how his work blends legal analysis with broader cultural and human elements, compassion, storytelling, religion, the arts, and lived experience, because, as he and Kirk discuss, you can’t “legislate compassion.” Levine also describes the personal and scholarly path that led him to write Was Yosef on the Spectrum, viewing the biblical Joseph story through the lens of autism, and explains how community connections and shared purpose have helped the conference grow organically through relationships and advocacy.