Event Details at a Glance
- 📅 Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2026
- 🕘 Time: 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Eastern
- 🎤 Dr. Kirk Adams’s Session: 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern
- 💻 Format: 100% virtual and live-streamed (no physical venue)
- 🎟️ Ticket: $550 per person, single General Admission tier
- 💳 Payment: PayPal or any major credit card. Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.
- ♿ Accessibility: Live captioning will be provided. Additional accommodations can be requested on the registration form and will be kept confidential.
- 👔 Attire: Business (for presenters and honorees).
- 🔗 Register: https://consultspringboard.com/moxiecon-2026-north-america
I’m thrilled to share that on Wednesday, April 29, I’ll take the MoxieCon 2026 virtual stage to present the first major conference distillation of my doctoral research, a study I spent years on because the question at its heart would not leave me alone. Why are roughly 70% of working-age blind Americans out of the U.S. workforce, and what can we learn from the 30% who are in?
The Key Takeaway
Blind adults succeed in American corporations every day, yet the paths they actually take are rarely described in detail. My research set out to map one such path, and what I learned reframes how employers, ERG leaders, and blind professionals themselves should think about disability inclusion.
The Question That Drove the Research
I’ve spent my career in executive roles, leading The Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle, serving as President and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, and now advising corporations through Innovative Impact. In every one of those seats, the same stubborn ratio kept surfacing. Roughly seven in ten working-age blind Americans are not in the workforce, the inverse of the overall adult employment rate. I wanted to understand, in specific detail, what the three in ten had done to get in and stay in.
For my doctoral research at Antioch University, I designed an ethnographic study built on semi-structured interviews with eleven blind adults successfully employed at large American corporations, names you know, and whose products and services you almost certainly use every day. The title I chose, Journeys Through Rough Country, reflects what their careers actually looked like. Not smooth highways paved by inclusive employers, but self-navigated routes through terrain most sighted colleagues will never have to cross.
What the Interviews Revealed
Nine factors emerged as decisive. Some were about the individual: hard-won blindness skills like Braille, cane travel, and fast accurate typing; mastery of assistive technology; and a strong internal locus of control that kept them moving when the environment did not. Some were about formation, long before the first résumé, high expectations from family and school, and family support that treated corporate employment as the expected outcome, not a stretch goal.
And crucially, several of the factors were not about the individual at all. They were about the environment. The accessibility of workplace tools and systems. The presence, or absence, of reasonable accommodations. The compensation offered relative to sighted peers. And the deeply personal calculation of self-advocacy: when, how, and whether to disclose a disability, knowing that any answer carries consequences.
Taken together, the picture is this: successfully employed blind adults have largely forged their own paths, with family support, hard-won skills, and a strong sense of agency playing crucial roles. Corporate inclusion of blind employees is in its infancy.
The Limitation I Want to Name Up Front
I studied success. That is a deliberate choice, and it has consequences worth stating plainly. The eleven participants in my study are not a representative cross-section of blind Americans, they are, by design, people who got in and stayed in. Their journeys teach us a great deal about what works, but they cannot tell the full story of the 70% who are not in the workforce. That story, why people exit, why they never enter, why accommodations are denied, why careers stall, deserves its own dedicated research. What my study offers is a clear-eyed map of one specific route through rough country. It does not, and cannot, stand in for a map of the country itself.
Why MoxieCon 2026 Is the Right Stage
MoxieCon 2026 is a one-day, fully virtual, fully captioned conference produced by Springboard Consulting and hosted by Nadine Vogel, a leader whose firm has stayed the course on disability inclusion in a climate where many have not. The day is built for the people who actually do this work: ERG leaders, chief diversity officers, HR and talent-acquisition leads, compliance professionals, digital-accessibility practitioners, and the consultants who support them.
The agenda opens with a keynote from Dr. Hoby Wedler, a blind chemist and sensory storyteller whose work reminds us that perception itself can be trained. I find that pairing meaningful. Hoby’s work teaches sighted professionals to perceive more deeply by removing sight. My session speaks to what it actually takes to succeed as a blind professional inside the corporate environments those same sighted peers run. Perception and practice. Research and lived experience. I can think of few better ways to spend a Wednesday in April.
What This Means
For individual blind professionals: You are not alone in weighing the disclose-or-not-disclose dilemma, in navigating an inaccessible automated hiring screen, or in asking for an accommodation that has been denied to others before you. The nine factors from my research are not a checklist, they are a vocabulary. Use them to name what you already know, and to advocate with precision for what you need.
For employers: Inclusion of blind employees is in its infancy, and that means the cost of course correction is still low. Audit the accessibility of your digital hiring tools and onboarding systems. Train managers in how accommodation requests should actually be handled. Build ERGs with real executive sponsors and real budgets. And understand that a workforce that reflects the society it serves is not a charity project, it is a strategic advantage.
Conclusion
Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a strategic advantage. That line has been the through-line of my work since my first executive role, and it is the line I will carry onto the MoxieCon stage on April 29. My session is thirty minutes. Registration is open, the event is virtual and captioned, and I invite you to join me. Let’s turn dialogue into action, together.
” Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a strategic advantage. “
Dr. Kirk Adams, Ph.D.
Advocate, Leader and Keynote Speaker on Disability Inclusion & Leadership
Leading the Way to Accessible Innovation
Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI)
Executive Director
Strengthening individual and organizational capability for creating diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.
Innovative Impact, LLC Consulting
Managing Director
Impactful Workforce Inclusion Starts Here
American Foundation for the Blind
Immediate Past President & CEO
To create a world of no limits for people who are blind or visually impaired.
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