Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

Dr. Kirk Adams, PhD

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams is a compelling podcast series that brings listeners into the world of accessibility, leadership, and social change through the lens of one of the most influential voices in blindness advocacy. Dr. Kirk Adams, former President and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind and a lifelong champion for the rights of people with visual impairments, hosts this insightful and inspiring program.

  1. 1d ago

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jeff Wissel, Vice-President, Accessibility, Aira

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jeff Wissel, Vice-President, Accessibility, Aira https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-09-16-2026/ In 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. The turning point was meeting Alicia, a blind vice president at Fidelity, who pushed him to start an employee resource group, it now has 8,000 members, and in his own 3,000-person phone center he found nine other people with RP who had each thought they were alone. That led to Fidelity's Office of Customer Accessibility, then four years and eight months as Chief Accessibility Officer at Disability:IN, and now Aira, where he is two months in. Kirk tells his own Disability:IN story along the way, meeting Northrop Grumman's Bob Vetere, pitching CEO Wes Bush on the Seattle Lighthouse's blind and DeafBlind machinists, and winning ITAR certification and a place in the defense supply chain. Both men close on community: Jeff on Aira Explorers and the stigma that disappears when accessibility sits in the accommodations catalog, Kirk on ISDI's new Community Coalition. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that very same Dr. Kirk Adams, speaking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And I have with me today — I'd say it's long enough to say a long time friend and colleague — Jeff Wissel, who's Vice President, Accessibility at Aira. Hello, Jeff. Jeff Wissel: Hey, Dr. Kirk, how are you? Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm good. And this is really interesting to me, because two really interesting parts of my life are intersecting here today. When I first was hired by the American Foundation for the Blind to lead that iconic organization, Helen Keller's organization, I moved to New York City from Seattle. And among other things, learned how to travel the subway system using the long white cane, which is an orientation and mobility personal highlight for me. And I got a call very early on from a gentleman named Suman Kanuganti, who said he was developing a system for blind people to connect with human beings who could offer sighted assistance. And he wanted to show it to me. So he and another gentleman whose name escapes me, who I never encountered again, came into the offices at AFB, and we sat in the conference room and I put on a pair of Google glasses, and I downloaded an app onto my iPhone and I connected with an agent who described the room to me. What was on the walls? The view out the window down onto Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. There was a bust of M.C. Migel, the founder of AFB. She described that. After about five minutes of that, it was enough of a wow factor that I was pretty much an Aira fan from then on. Dr. Kirk Adams: And I've been a subscriber since then — I guess ten years, coming up on ten years. And wow. And Aira has gone through many different steps and evolutions and advancements and improvements. And probably the most intense situations I've used Aira to support me is in airports. Even the Uber driver — you say Alaska Airlines, they drop you off in front of an airport and you're going in, and where's the Alaska Airlines desk? And in the past, you would kind of wait till you heard a friendly sounding set of footsteps: excuse me, can you direct me to the Alaska desk? And sometimes that worked well and sometimes it didn't. But with Aira, you say, can you help me? I need to locate the Alaska desk. And they say, hold your camera up. Turn it a little left. Hold up your phone. Turn a little left, a little right. Okay, there it is. Turn 20 degrees to your left. Walk about 25 feet. Now turn ten degrees to your right. Go about ten more steps, a little left. There you are. You're in line. So it's like magic. For me, as someone who has traveled a lot for business travel, that's probably my most interesting use case. I've also done, many times, I'm in this hotel room and it is really hot and I cannot figure out this climate control. Dr. Kirk Adams: And which of these buttons does which? How do I — where's the fan? How do I turn it on? My suitcase is locked. These four little rotors need to all be turned to zero. Can you help me get them adjusted so I can unlock my suitcase? So obviously, for me, a lot of travel stuff. But then at some point, not long after, I was at a conference. It was in the DC area. It might have been after I moved to Arlington, Virginia. Honestly, I attended so many conferences representing the American Foundation for the Blind, I don't recall exactly what it was. But I was by myself. I was at a table with other folks, but I was the only person from AFB there. And they said, everybody clear the room. Secretary Elaine Chao was coming to speak, and the Secret Service needs to make sure the room is safe. So everybody get up and go into the hall. And as I merged into the traffic in the hallway, I encountered another gentleman with a long white cane. And it was Jeff Wissel, there with the team from Fidelity. And we stood there and got to talking for about 15, 20 minutes while the Secret Service did their thing. And they cordially invited me to join them at their table, which I did. Dr. Kirk Adams: And so Jeff and I have been in pretty regular contact since then, as both of us have turned various pages and chapters in our career paths. And so I'm just so pleased to have Jeff here. I'm so excited that the Aira part of my life and the Jeff Wissel part of my life have now aligned. So it's a good thing for everybody in our community. And Jeff, I really just want to hand the microphone to you. I know our experiences with blindness are so very different. I became totally blind very quickly as a five year old when my retinas detached. I know the arc of your becoming a blind guy, it's quite different than mine. And so I would love to hear your reflections on that journey. Hear about your career path, any thoughts you might have for especially young blind people out there wanting to make their way in the world of work. And then really the excitement about Aira — what your role is there, and what you've discovered so far in the short time you've been there, where you see things. What's the current state of the union at Aira, and where you are a visionary. So where do you see things going? So I'm handing you the talking stick. Jeff Wissel: Awesome. Thanks, Dr. Kirk. And I'm honored to call you my mentor and friend. And as you were describing how we first met, I was remembering it vividly. It was an honor to meet you also, because you're a legend in our space. And when you and I first met, I was pretty new on my accessibility leadership journey, and you really took me under your wing. And I'm forever grateful for that. So for the audience, I'm Jeff Wissel. This month, actually, I'll be turning a young 59 years of age. And the reason I lead with my age is, for me, my personal journey with sight loss started — I have retinitis pigmentosa, or RP. And when I first noticed symptoms, I'll say I was seven years old, somewhere in there. And one experience, I was riding my bike with a friend of mine on our school parking lot near our house. It's dusk time and we're riding and I start pulling ahead of my friend and I'm like, wow, I must be really fast. But what I didn't realize is I was getting ready to run into a rusty chain separating the parking lots, that my friend saw from way behind. Fortunately, the way it hit the tire, the fender, the handlebar had flipped right over me and I didn't get a scratch. And I just ran through this metal chain, and it was like one of the worst experiences I can remember. Jeff Wissel: And for many in the audience who have retinitis pigmentosa, our journey is probably very similar. Night blindness, one of the key symptoms. For me, I still have sight to lose. I became a late in life runner, so it drives my wife crazy. But when the conditions are light and it's safe enough, I can run. In that same environment at night time, if I didn't have my white cane or my guide dog, Gabe, you would swear I was a drunk man walking, because I can't navigate the sidewalk, just stepping into the grass and everything. But throughout my life, it is a degenerative eye disease. So different things. I started out driving and playing softball, just an alumni league after high school, and I remember being in the outfield and saying, I got it, and ball's hit and I got it. All of a sudden it's like, I don't got it. And ball dropped 20 feet from me. Do that a couple of times and it's like, all right, I kind of have to get rid of that sport. Gave up driving when I was 34. And for many folks, when I tell them that, they're like, oh my gosh. And I reverse it and I say, no, it was really thank gosh. That last year and a half of driving, nothing happened. Jeff Wissel: But it was so stressful. It's always, to this

  2. 2d ago

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Rachel Antoine, Senior Director of International Operations, Braille Institute

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Rachel Antoine, Senior Director of International Operations, Braille Institute https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-09-15-2026/ In 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. The second half covers the documentary Brailled It, filmed at the 2024 Braille Challenge Finals with GoPros worn by competitors Salome, Isaiah and Christopher Morgan and now touring US cinemas; the program's first African regional in Kenya, where more than 1,000 students took part and many competed with slate and stylus because there were not enough Braillers to go round; and plans to build an East Africa model spanning Uganda and Tanzania, with three Kenyan students due at the 2027 Finals. Rachel also describes the free, non-competitive foundational category any parent, teacher or grandparent can order year-round, and Cane Quest, Braille Institute's orientation and mobility program, whose SoCal regional runs October 3rd at the Los Angeles Zoo. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And very excited today, because we're going to be talking a lot about Braille. I have Rachel Antoine here with me from the Braille Institute. Say hey, Rachel. Rachel Antoine: Hello. So happy to be here. Thank you, Dr. Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: And Rachel, what's your title at Braille? Rachel Antoine: Yeah. So I am Senior Director of International Operations at Braille Institute. My role is really about connecting programs, people and possibilities around the world. I lead our international work, expanding programs like Braille Challenge and Cane Quest, and building partnerships with organizations, schools, and educators in other countries. Dr. Kirk Adams: That sounds like a fun job to me. Rachel Antoine: It is. Dr. Kirk Adams: So my history with Braille — I think many of you know I'm a blind person. My retinas detached when I was five years old. I was in kindergarten in Lynnwood, Washington, north of Seattle. My parents — I was born when they were in college, so they were in their mid-20s when my retinas detached. They had never met a blind person before. Before I became one very quickly. And they were told that I wasn't going to be allowed to come back to the neighborhood school, that I needed to go to the school for blind children. At that time, the model was, I think, most blind and deaf kids went to a state school. My parents visited the Washington State school. They did not like what they saw as far as the level of academic activity. My retinal surgeon was in Oregon, and someone there at University of Oregon Medical Hospital said the Oregon State School for the Blind is awesome. So I remember visiting there, and they agreed that it was awesome. And they quit their jobs and moved the family down to Oregon so I could go to the Oregon State School. And I had a teacher named Mrs. Summers for first, second and third grade. May she rest in peace. And whenever I'm in a setting where they say, name the person who had the most influence on your life, I say, Mrs. Summers, because she taught me how to read and write Braille. Dr. Kirk Adams: I was hospitalized a lot. I had quite a number of eye surgeries that were painful and unsuccessful, and I would spend 10 to 14 days after each surgery in the hospital with my head in a clamp, so I couldn't move my head to disrupt the surgery they'd done. So Braille was really my lifeline. And my mom would go to the Braille library of the National Library Service library in Salem and load up the station wagon with boxes of books and bring them to the hospital. And I read and read and read. So Braille has been super important to me. I learned about the Braille Challenge, gosh, ten, 12, 14 years ago. I was aware of it. At the time, I was the CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle. And we had a mentor-protegé relationship with the Lighthouse for the Blind in Port Richey, Florida, which is near Tarpon Springs, the sponge capital of the United States, which is fairly near Tampa. And the Tampa Lighthouse was having the regional Braille Challenge the week that I was there. So my wife, Ros, and I went, and I got to meet the kids and see the activities they were doing. It was a Harry Potter theme, so it must have been when the Harry Potter books were so popular. And I had a chance to talk to the parents while the kids were doing their activities. Dr. Kirk Adams: And like my parents, most of them had never met a blind person before. They had a blind child. So they had a lot of questions about how to raise a child successfully who is blind. So we talked about being developmentally appropriate, and talked about creating a Braille-rich environment — that your sighted child is surrounded by print all the time. The cereal box, the magazine on the table, the street signs you drive by. And you have to be very intentional with the young blind child to have lots of Braille around. And I said, order some Braille magazines from the National Library Service, and let them play with those and tear them up, chew on them and do what little kids do with board books. And put Braille on everything, label everything with Braille. And then, if your four-year-old sighted child is out playing in the sandbox and tussling with other kids over the toys, you want your blind child out on that playground with their cane doing the same thing. If your 12- or 13-year-old sighted child is taking the bus or getting themselves downtown to meet friends, to do things, go to movies, you need to make sure your blind child is learning how to use public transportation and has orientation and mobility skills, so they can do those same things. Dr. Kirk Adams: And we talked about the school-to-work transition. You have sighted kids doing chores. Blind kids need to do chores, and you need to figure out different approaches to do things. But you want blind kids doing the same thing sighted kids do, using the alternative techniques of blindness. And literacy is so important. Braille is so important. For me, there was no question — I was totally blind. So in first grade, I learned Braille. Blindness comes in so many variations. Many people who are legally blind have some usable vision. Sometimes there's questions whether or not kids need to learn Braille. And I always say, if the visually impaired child cannot read at the same speed and comprehension as a sighted child, if they're trying to use magnification, they need to learn Braille. Braille is literacy. I say, if listening to materials is sufficient, then why do sighted people still read? So we need to read too. So anyway, I did the Braille Challenge regional in Tampa, and I was given a certificate of Braille wizardry, which I still have, with the Harry Potter theme. And then, my gosh, five, six years later, I became the president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. And I was visiting partners around the country, and I made a stop at the Braille Institute and sat with — that was before your time, Rachel. Dr. Kirk Adams: 2016, 2017. Yeah. And got to know folks. And then I got a call in early 2019 asking if I would come and give the keynote talk at the Braille Challenge gala. So again, my wife, Ros, and I flew out and met the kids. And they — [unclear 00:08:13] Rachel will tell you all about this — but they fly in the winners from the regions, and they gather on the USC campus. And [I] remember the Trojan, the hated Trojan marching band — I'm a Husky fan — marched the kids across the campus playing the USC fight song. And they had their competitions, and then the awards gala. And I got to talk about how important Braille is to me, and said a lot of the things I've said so far on this podcast, in a more organized and elegant fashion. But I talked about the importance of Braille and how meaningful it was to be there. They had an alumni who's become a really good friend of mine, a young lady named Caitlin Hernandez, who's totally blind. She lives in San Francisco, and she's a public school teacher. And she gave the alumni speech, and it was just such a moving experience. Dr. Kirk Adams: And then fast forward to this year, 2026. I was talking to Dimitri Kales, who's now the CEO of Braille Institute, and we were just catching up and comparing notes on a few things. And he said, well, next time you're going to be in the Los Angeles area, let me know. I said, I'm going to be there next week, because my wife and I are visiting our daughter Rachel, who lives in Highland Park. We're coming to visit her. And he said,

  3. Aug 20

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Tom Babinszki, Owner, Even Grounds

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Tom Bobinszki, Owner, Even Grounds https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-20-2026/ Here, Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with Tom Babinszki, owner of Even Grounds and a travel and tourism accessibility consultant, whom he first met across an exhibit table at a Kennedy Center LEAD Conference, where, as Kirk tells it, "what to my wondering hands should appear" was a 3D model of the White House, pillars and porticos and all. Babinszki was born completely blind in 1970s Hungary, where a close family member advised his parents not to take him out on the street because it would be embarrassing, and suggested that one day he might watch the geese at the end of the village. His parents decided instead that their son would have exactly the education everyone else had. A scholarship year at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia followed, then Trinity College in Hartford, then George Mason, three years directing the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Hadley School for the Blind, and some twenty-five years in digital accessibility, including teaching thousands of people at IBM. Even Grounds grew out of a failure. A lifelong traveler, "my favorite smell is jet fuel," and a coin collector who bought building replicas in museum gift shops just to understand where he was standing, Babinszki hired a designer and a 3D printing company and produced models of Washington landmarks, only to find his blind friends admired them and had no wish to own fifty large buildings. Museums and schools did. The company he founded in 2023 now pairs holistic accessibility consulting with tactile 3D work for the Toledo Zoo, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Opera, a Kenyan school for the blind through Clovernook, and a Braille map from the 1800s remade so it could finally be touched. One small tactile map of a public restroom drew thirteen hundred LinkedIn likes against his usual fifty. His advice to listeners is the whole argument in four words: don't ever accept that something is not accessible. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a guest who's doing some very interesting things to make the world more accessible for us who are blind and visually impaired. Today I have Tom Babinszki. He's the owner of Even Grounds. He's a travel and tourism accessibility consultant. Say hey, Tom. Tom Babinszki: Hi, Kirk. Thank you for your invitation. I'm glad to be here. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, absolutely. So several summers ago I attended a conference here in Seattle that was sponsored by the Kennedy Center for the Arts. It's called the LEAD Conference, and it's about leadership and accessibility of the arts. And one of the exhibitors there was Tom. And [I] visited his room, his booth, his table — and what to my wondering hands should appear, but 3D models of buildings and architectural wonders that I had never seen and had no concept of what they looked like. I lost my sight at five when my retinas detached. I cannot remember anything visual at all. I cannot conjure up a visual image in my mind. I cannot recall colors. If you say blue, in my mind I see the Braille characters. Tom Babinszki: Blue — I'm the same way. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. But I remember having in my hands a 3D model of the White House, and I was so surprised by the pillars and the porticos and the verandas. And it was not a symmetrical situation. It had a lot going on. And it was very interesting. And I spent quite some time with the 3D model. And Tom and I recently reconnected, and he is creating accessibility for museums and various sites, points of interest. One thing he is doing that I applaud so heartily [is] 3D maps of [unclear 00:02:49] public restrooms. How many times have I searched for the paper towels? How many times have I decided, no, I'm not going to wash my hands, because I'm going to pick up more germs trying to find the faucet and the soap that I'm going to lose. So Tom's doing some really cool stuff. We just want to hand it over to you and have you talk a little bit about your experience with blindness, your personal lived experience — and then you've had such a long and varied career in accessibility, I know 20, 25 years at least. So I would love to hear the summary of that, and how you came to start Even Grounds, what the history has been so far, where you're at, what you're doing now, and then what do you see for the future? So Tom, it's over to you. Tom Babinszki: Thank you. Kirk, if you don't mind, let me start from the very beginning, from where I was born. Because I think that's pretty relevant to where I am today. I was born in the '70s in Hungary, and that was one of those socialist countries in Eastern Europe. So education for blind people was rather limited. There was a school for the blind. But what started everything was that when I was born, there was a close family member who said that my parents shouldn't take me out on the street because it's embarrassing. And then she said, well, maybe when he grows up, maybe he can watch the geese at the end of the village. Now, mind you, I think watching the geese at the end of the village was going to be much more difficult than my two master's degrees, but I didn't know what she had in mind. But that was the point where my parents said that, regardless of how — they had no idea how to do it — but this kid is going to have the same education that everybody else [has]. And that's when I was a baby. Dr. Kirk Adams: So did your parents — were there other brothers and sisters already, or were you the first? Tom Babinszki: I was the first at that point, and later I had a brother two and a half years [younger?] 00:05:03. So we're pretty close, growing up. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, so high five to your parents. Good for them. Tom Babinszki: Thank you. I'll tell them. Because it was incredible what they did. And they took me to — where they found a school for the blind, they took me there. I studied there and then went to high school. But then I had to advocate a lot for myself, because there really wasn't too much advocacy. So I had to fight for every single thing. All I heard is that you cannot do it because you are blind, and blind people can't write. So I heard it enough. And I'm very thankful to every one of those people, because — Dr. Kirk Adams: Did you get blindness skills instruction? Were you [taught?] 00:05:56 Braille and cane travel? Tom Babinszki: [Taught?] 00:05:59, actually. So when I was 16, I got a scholarship. It was an international scholarship at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia. And I spent there a year, and I got lots of mobility instruction there and other skills. Actually, I just came back from the LEAD Conference last week, which was in Philadelphia. It was amazing to be back after 30 years and wander the same streets. Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool. Tom Babinszki: But then, in the meantime, life was difficult, because my parents gave me the education, but what they couldn't give me is, they couldn't stop the discrimination. Every time I looked for a job, they either told me you can't do it because you're blind, or somehow they started convincing me that I need a car and the driver's license, in a city where public transportation is amazing. Tom Babinszki: And then I got a scholarship to the US, and I came here and I finished my master's degree, and I got a job. And — Dr. Kirk Adams: Where did you go to school? Tom Babinszki: At that point, I went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. And later, when I moved to Washington, DC, and I was working in accessibility, I went to George Mason. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Tom Babinszki: So this country welcomed me. They didn't ask me what is it you cannot do. They told me that you're welcome to help us with anything that you would like to, and do what you can, and we'll support you. I get so much support from people that I didn't even know, because they never looked at me as a blind person. They looked at me as an accessibility consultant. And sure, I know we still have problems, and we do, and that's why I'm still doing what I'm doing. But at least I was able to succeed. And so I started working for accessibility consulting companies. And I'm not going to keep it too long here, but at some point, for three years, I was at the Hadley School for the Blind, where I was the director of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, I did not know that. Tom Babinszki: Yeah. I built that program. George Abbott started building it, and then under his leadership, basically I got the whole thing, and they told me build it from scratch. And that was a ton of fun. But what's most important here is that the travel bug bit me when I was young, very young. And I love traveling. You know, my favorite smell is jet fuel. Tom Babinszki: And every time I have a chance, I go. And I hardly ever had — other than during Covid time — in my life when I didn't have an upcoming airline ticket to be used. But that interest in travel gave me something, that it wasn't just enough to be there. I wanted to experience so much. And some of the things that I really wanted to experience was buildings. Every time I went somewhere like a more famous building, I always started out at the gift shop, because some of the places have building replicas. Tom Babinszki: And when they ha

  4. Aug 18

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cazerny Bussey, Founder, Even Though I'm Blind Foundation

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cazerny Bussey, Founder, Even Though I'm Blind Foundation https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-18-2026/ Here Dr. Kirk Adams welcomes Cazerny Bussey, founder of the Even Though I'm Blind Foundation, for a first conversation between two blind leaders who arrived at the same work from opposite directions. Kirk lost his sight at five in small farming towns in Oregon and Washington, where he was the only blind kid in every school after fourth grade. Bussey grew up in Brooklyn with low vision, active and surrounded by a large family, and lost his sight at fifteen, a sophomore at a performing-arts high school, already recording music, after a second retinal surgery took the optic nerve. He describes the moment in the exam room as a decision he had to make on the spot, and the years that followed as a run of doors opening: two and three shows a week, work alongside Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J and Chuck D, and the persistent fact that he was the only blind person in every room he entered. That isolation is what became an organization. A love song Bussey wrote called "Even Though I'm Blind" gave the foundation its name, and research he did afterward gave it its purpose, blind college students, blind chefs, blind skiers, blind pageant winners, an entire world he had not known was there. Today the foundation runs a radio station carrying roughly forty-five independent blind artists, a podcast built on community members telling their own stories, and a curated directory of blind-owned businesses, alongside an artist showcase staged at the NFB convention in Texas. Bussey has just joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op as a sponsor of Access Information News. Kirk and Bussey trade New York geography, blindness-skills philosophy, and a shared conviction that visibility is the work, and agree to meet in New York in February. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, in my office in Seattle, Washington on a beautiful sunny August day. Best time of the year here. I lived in New York, I lived in Virginia. I don't miss August in either of those places. So I'm a Northwest guy. My guest today is a new acquaintance. I don't know how I've missed you so far, but my guest today is Cazerny Bussey, founder of Even Though I'm Blind Foundation. Say hello. Cazerny Bussey: Hello, everybody. Dr. Kirk Adams: And Cazerny is out there making waves, getting things done. And we just became acquainted. We've had one conversation just to get to know each other a little bit, and immediately knew I wanted you on the podcast. Because, Cazerny — so for those who don't know me, I'm a blind person. Have been since I was five years old. I was born a sighted kid and became a blind kid when I was five. Both my retinas detached. I was totally blind very quickly. And so there was really no question that I needed to learn Braille. I needed to learn how to travel confidently and safely with a white cane. At that time, I needed to learn how to type [on] a typewriter so I could go to public school and type assignments and papers and things for my sighted teachers who didn't know Braille. So I went to Oregon State School for the Blind — first, second, third grade — then on into public school. And very interested to have you [unclear 00:02:17]. Our — I think our experiences as blind people are so different. I grew up in little farming communities in the Pacific Northwest. Silverton, Oregon; graduated from high school in Snohomish, Washington. One was known for strawberries, one was known for dairy farming and football. Dr. Kirk Adams: I was always the only blind kid in any school I went to after fourth grade. And the little towns I grew up in — when kids turned 16, they got driver's licenses and they got some sort of job, and I didn't get either. So I lived a fairly isolated, pretty tough time in high school, and then on to college where things got better. I graduated with a degree in economics and went into banking and finance for ten years, then into the nonprofit sector, became the president and CEO of The Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle. The American Foundation for the Blind — moved to New York for that. But knowing the little bit I know about you, you became a blind person later in life than I did. You grew up in a very different environment than I did. And you have, like I said, you've been doing stuff, making things happen. So we'd really just like to hand you the microphone here. Your story, how you came to be part of the community. What inspired you to start your foundation? What's the journey been like so far, and where are you taking things? Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I first would like to just thank you for allowing me on your platform. I did come across you because, as I was doing my due diligence and my research, it was hard to not bump into Kirk Adams, because you done made so many great things happen in your lifetime. And I really do commend you, and I honor that. And yeah, looking forward to doing things as big as you done it someday, when I get there. But yeah, I lost my eyesight at the age of 15 years old due to retinal detachment as well. Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. So we have that in common. So — yeah, around five years old. Wow. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. So it is a lot different than your environment. Dr. Kirk Adams: I will tell you that I lived in Brooklyn when I went to work in 2016 to lead the American Foundation for the Blind. The offices were at Two Penn Plaza, right above Penn Station, next to Madison Square Garden. But my wife and I lived in Park Slope at Eighth Avenue and Eighth Street. And my greatest orientation and mobility triumph is learning to take the F train, to transfer to the A at Jay Street–MetroTech, to go into Penn Station and up to 34th Avenue and into the office. And for a kid who grew up in little teeny towns — my first experience was staying in corporate housing on 43rd, between Eighth and Ninth, pretty near the Port Authority. And I had an O&M instructor, and she asked me, "How's your experience walking on heavily trafficked sidewalks?" I said, "Yeah, pretty good." And then when I turned the corner from 43rd to Seventh Avenue to walk down to 33rd, after about half a block, I stopped and said, "I had no idea." So. Cazerny Bussey: You're right. Yeah. That's the heart of New York, you know. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Cazerny Bussey: That is literally where everything happened. Although I feel like a lot of parts of New York is pretty hectic. Park Slope is a pretty nice neighborhood. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I like Manhattan because if you can count, you know where you are. Things are numbered. Things are nice 90-degree angles, nice rectangular blocks. So that's a good part. And then you got the open hatchways in the sidewalk and the scaffolding and all that. Right. All right. So you're 15. So you were in high school, I assume. Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, I was. Okay. Dr. Kirk Adams: I was fully sighted until then. Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. I wouldn't say fully sighted. Okay. Yeah. I have low vision, but I was really active. Like I was going to tell you, at five years old, I think where I was from, we was outside in the street throwing footballs and throwing basketballs in the hoop. We actually went outside then. I'm not that old, but — right. It wasn't like internet-based. We was actually in our neighborhoods. I had a really awesome childhood growing up. Had a large family and very supportive. And it was a lot of us boys, so we challenged each other like a pack of lions. So we wrestle and just play sports, and we was competitive. And we chased the girls, all kind of stuff. Young. Right. So by 12 years old, before I get to 15, my father — he was very heavy into music. He was actually a part of the old school rap group Stetsasonic. And yeah, them guys did some great things. So he had me around music. I wasn't really, per se, wanting to do music, but I did like it. Cazerny Bussey: Maybe I loved it. But at that time, I probably would have wanted to go outside or play my — at the time, what was it, a Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 — play with my friends. But he recognized that gift and he really had me in professional recording environments. So I recorded my first song at the age of 12 years old. Song I actually wrote. And that was big for me, because that kind of changed the way I viewed the studio. Instead of being there seeing them guys, I was able to partake in the festivities, you know? Yeah. So, long story short, I go to high school. I auditioned in junior high school to Frank Sinatra School of Performing Arts, which was — yeah, it was [founded?] 00:09:01 by the late, great Tony Bennett. And I got in. I auditioned. Academically, I was able to reach — it was a special school at the time. I think the school only was open two years prior to me getting in it. It was a very new school. Dr. Kirk Adams: Is it located in Brooklyn? Cazerny Bussey: It's actually located in Long Island — it was located in Long Island City at the time. Okay. They didn't even have their own building. We were sharing one of the campuses with LaGuardia College. Okay. Yeah, the C building. So we was — yeah, but loved it. Freshman year, met all my friends. And it was a very artsy school, about 500 students. So I was really fortunate to be able to get in. Great music teachers — Miss [Bess?] 00:10:02, Mr. [Sandri?] 00:10:0

  5. Aug 11

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jeremy Grandstaff, Executive Director, The Inspiration Foundation

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jeremy Grandstaff, Executive Director, The Inspiration Foundation https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-11-2026/ In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Jeremy Grandstaff, six months into a newly created role as executive director of the Inspiration Foundation, the nonprofit founded by Cleanlogic co-CEO Isaac Shapiro in honour of his blind mother, Bea. Kirk, who introduced the two, traces their friendship from a bench at a National Federation of the Blind conference through Jeremy's consulting work at the American Foundation for the Blind. Jeremy tells his own story: a county assessor who advised institutionalising him at age two and the father who gave the man two minutes to leave the property; school for the blind through fifth grade; a 12-year-old cold-calling publishers for accessible books in 1988; Bowling Green State University, IBM, and a master's in organization development. He is frank about two employers who told him he would never be as competent as a sighted person, and that he could always "just go on disability", the moment that made him say yes to this job. The conversation then turns practical. Jeremy lays out the Foundation's two-sided strategy, grants that strengthen the pipeline of candidates, and the emerging Inspiration Seal that builds a pipeline of employers ready to hire and promote them, alongside a goal of raising the disability employment rate by 10% in five years. Kirk raises the contested ground of disability simulation, recalling the "hand grenade" a proposed dining-in-the-dark event threw into an AFB staff meeting and the research that resolved it, and Jeremy explains how the Foundation has rebuilt the format as a Dining in the Dark and Executive Roundtable with education on both sides of the meal. They close on executive presence, Jeremy insisting on walking to the podium with his cane rather than being escorted, because the walk is the argument. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: And welcome, everybody, to another episode of the cleverly titled Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in sunny, breezy Seattle, Washington, on a beautiful summer's day. And today my guest is a dear — I'll say a dear friend, and becoming a long-time colleague. Jeremy Grandstaff. Hi, Jeremy. Jeremy Grandstaff: Well, hi, Kirk. That was a beautiful introduction. I hope that you're having better weather in Seattle than the melting pot that is D.C., where I live, with humidity. But thank you so much for having me on. It's really good to be with you. And I absolutely would consider you a long-time friend and colleague as well. So I'm honored by that. Dr. Kirk Adams: Wonderful. Well, Jeremy stepped into a new and exciting role about six months ago. He is executive director of the Inspiration Foundation. And Jeremy, when we did most of our work together, it was in that sticky melting pot of Arlington, Virginia. And it is August, and I do not miss living there one single bit. I bet it's 76, no humidity, and a breeze here in Seattle today. So in any case, I met Jeremy at a National Federation of the Blind conference when I was fairly new in my role as president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind — my great honor to have an opportunity to lead that fine organization, Helen Keller's organization. And Jeremy and I sat on a bench together, and he talked to me about the consulting work he did, the organizational development work that he greatly enjoyed. Asked me to consider bringing him on as a resource should I need [unclear 00:02:32] strategic planning, executive coaching help. And I did engage Jeremy, and we accomplished some wonderful things together. And fast-forwarding, four years ago I left the American Foundation for the Blind. Jeremy and I have kept in good cadence of contact. And I had the opportunity to introduce him to a gentleman named Isaac Shapiro. Isaac is a partner in a company called Cleanlogic, which Jeremy can tell us more about. But Isaac's an excited dude. His mom is blind. He grew up with a blind mother, and he is an entrepreneurial cat. He started a company importing body care products with a distribution center near Philadelphia. And last I knew, he employed over 30 blind individuals in that warehouse and distribution setting. He's onshoring his manufacturing from China, has a goal of hiring 90 more people with disabilities. So he is one of those people who is out there doing things and not just talking about supercharging your bottom line through disability inclusion, but actually doing it — hiring people with disabilities and changing lives. And in honor and inspiration from his mother, he created the Inspiration Foundation. And I've been involved for several years with the foundation, in that they give grants to nonprofits in the blindness field who traditionally have been members of an organization called VisionServe Alliance. But in any case, they're nonprofits serving people who are blind. And Isaac and I share a passion for creating employment opportunities for people who are blind. So his grantmaking has focused around supporting the use of technology by these nonprofits in supporting their employment-driven programs. So we have lots of intersections in life. Isaac came to see me maybe in the first month or two when I was at the American Foundation for the Blind, came to the New York offices. He'd had a history with AFB previously, introduced himself, gave me some of his products with Braille labeling, which of course warmed my heart toward Isaac. Anyone who hands me a consumer product with Braille on it gets a star in their chart with me. And then we've also kept in touch, as I said. I've been a little bit involved in supporting the foundation by being on the grant review committee. And then when I see where two and two can make five or more, I love to make those connections. So when Isaac was seeking an executive director, I was pleased to suggest that he talk to Jeremy Grandstaff and consider him for that role. And so here we are. I'm pretty much done talking now. I would like, Jeremy, if you could talk to us a little bit about your lived experience with blindness, why this work is so meaningful to you, where the organization was at when you stepped into your leadership role. And it's a newly created role, too, so you have a wonderful lifetime opportunity to shape your own role, which is cool. And where — as our mutual dear friend Sean Callagy would say, from UNBLINDED — he would say: where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you going? What's working for you? What are your challenges? So there you have it. Jeremy Grandstaff: Well, what a tee-up. First of all, thank you for that, Kirk. As I said before, it's really an honor to be with you. I have admired your work. Actually, you didn't know this, but back when you worked for the Lighthouses, I was kind of following you there. And then you went into AFB, and I thought, here's my chance, right, to build a relationship with you. So it's been really exciting. I think we've known each other for maybe seven or eight years now. So, yeah, very good to know you. I'll start with me, right, and kind of talking about some of my lived experience. I grew up in a little town called Marengo, Ohio. I was the first of four kids. Three of us cannot see; the other, my sister, can. And when I was first born — I think I was like two years old — my parents were told they needed someone from the county to come out and assess me. And so that person came out, Kirk, at the age of two, and told my parents that I would probably be best served by being put into an institution. And I'm so fortunate that my father — God rest his soul, he just died four months ago — the way the story was told to me, he basically gave them two minutes to get off his property and never come back. Right? You gotta kind of love that. And so there was this attitude that my parents had that was: nothing is off limits. You're going to have to figure out how to do it. No is never an answer that is acceptable, and we'll give you feedback, but you're going to have to solve your own problems. And what I find fascinating about that is that's exactly what we want to see from our workforce, right? Is that they are problem solving and that they are bringing ingenuity and creative problem solving into any teams that we develop. And so I didn't know that at the time, right, that I was being taught those skills. I remember getting very frustrated one time and slamming down a pitchfork because I didn't — you know, like my dad telling me, figure it out. And I distinctly remember him saying, well, you can keep slamming that pitchfork down and make me have to buy another one, or you can figure out how to solve the problem. Right? And so I was the first to come back to my school. At the time they called it mainstreaming; I think they call it integrated schooling now. Dr. Kirk Adams: So did you go to school for blind children or not? Jeremy Grandstaff: So I went to the school for the blind until I was in fifth grade. Dr. Kirk Adams: Fifth. Okay. Jeremy Grandstaff: Yep. I even had a teacher — never forget you, Mrs. Murphy — who said I'd never make it in a public school. Sent her a graduation card, by the way, when I graduated. But I came back up to public school, and I remember being in sixth grade and coming home from school on the bus and calling up the publishing companies because I d

  6. Aug 6

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Mindy Kolin, Director of Development & Industry Partnerships at Teach Access, and Kate Sonka, Executive Director

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Mindy Kolin, Director of Development & Industry Partnerships at Teach Access, and Kate Sonka, Executive Director https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-06-2026/ In this warm anniversary episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk opens from a smoke-covered Seattle with wishes for friends in eastern Washington, then welcomes Kate Sonka, executive director of Teach Access, and Mindy Kolin, who leads its fundraising, partnerships and communications. Kirk traces his own first encounter with the organization: a visit to Yahoo's accessibility team early in his AFB tenure, where Darren Burton and Mike Shebanek showed him a whiteboard tally of how many incoming computer science graduates had ever heard of accessibility, a lopsided count that became the case for Teach Access. Kate, who grew up at the Wisconsin School for the Blind where both her parents taught, recounts the April 2016 kickoff at Yahoo with Shebanek, Larry Goldberg and Jeff Wieland; Mindy recalls starting her career at the New York employment agency Eleanor Roosevelt and Orin Lehman founded, and finding Teach Access on Indeed 25 years later. The heart of the conversation is strategy. Teach Access concentrates on educators rather than students directly, the multiplier being that one trained faculty member reaches 50 to 100 students a semester, and on "small teaching": folding accessibility into classes people already teach rather than fighting the years-long approval path for a new course. Kate walks through the Fellowship, the four-week Summer Institute, and the openly licensed Curriculum Repository; Mindy reports the headline result, a goal set in 2020 to reach 1 million students by 2030 that passed 1.5 million in 2025, five years early. They close on funding, on contract work with industry partners that keeps educator resources free, and on Teach Access Europe, where enforcement of the European Accessibility Act has made this a promising moment to expand. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from smoky Seattle, Washington. Our heartfelt wishes for strength and safety go out to our friends east of the mountains in eastern Washington, the Spokane area particularly hit hard. I have spent a lot of time in Spokane, as we established the Inland Northwest Lighthouse for the Blind and [unclear 00:01:07] about 50 blind people in that community. So our thoughts and prayers to folks in eastern Washington. Today on the podcast, we have Kate Sonka and Mindy Kolin, and they are with a forward-thinking, impactful organization that I love called Teach Access. So hello, Kate. Hello, Mindy. Kate Sonka: Hi, Kirk. Good to be here. Mindy Kolin: Hi, Kirk. Thanks for having us. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So my little history with Teach Access — which Kate and Mindy will tell you more — but my understanding is that it encourages universities to include accessibility in their core curriculum for computer science programs. And when I first was hired to be president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, when I stepped out of that same role here at the Lighthouse in Seattle to New York City, and after a couple of months getting oriented, turning over all the jigsaw puzzle pieces, took a trip to the Bay Area, because AFB had such great partnerships with the good people at Google and Apple and Genentech and Yahoo. And I went to visit Yahoo, and a former AFB employee, a blind gentleman named Darren Burton, was working there in our accessibility department. And I spent a couple hours with their team. And Mike Shebanek was there at that time. And they told me about a tally board. They had a whiteboard in their conference room. And when Yahoo was hiring new engineers, interviewing with the accessibility team was part of the interview process, and they kept a tally of how many of the young computer science graduates they were sent to interview — how many of them knew about accessibility and how many did not. And I can't quote the numbers exactly, but it was something like 764 had never heard of accessibility, didn't know what it was, and 27 at least knew what it was. So that's when Mike told me about Teach Access, and the long-term systems change model to bring accessibility into the mainstream of computer science curriculums, and to generate a whole new pipeline of people who would be working on technology for the good of all, who understood accessibility and could bake it in from the beginning. Shortly thereafter, I met Kate at one of the many, many blindness-related conferences where we crossed paths. And recently I was very pleased to receive an invitation in the mail to join Kate and some of her team at a dinner here in Seattle with some other leaders in accessibility and disability in the community. So we reconnected. She gave us some very exciting updates, said more people need to know about this. So how about come on the podcast? So here we are, and I am grateful for what Teach Access is doing. I'm very impressed with the intentional, very strategic way you're going about things. So I'd really love to hand it over to you, Kate, you, Mindy, to hear the story of how you got involved, the steps that have been taken so far, where the organization is at, where do you see things going? Kate Sonka: Yeah, this is Kate. Thank you so much, Kirk. I really actually really love that whiteboard story. I've never heard that specific story, so I'm excited to kind of add that to my repertoire of stories, to kind of talk about our origins, which I'll share in a moment. But just want to thank you, the team, for having us on the pod today, and being able to share about our work for your audience. So thank you to everyone who's listening in. So I'll do a really quick just who I am and where I've come from, and then Mindy as well, and then we'll get into the work that we do. So, my name again, Kate Sonka, I'm the executive director here at Teach Access. You know, I could spend a long time talking about my winding backstory, but I won't. I want to be able to talk about our organization. But one of the things — you know, sometimes the universe has a good sense of humor, right? And so growing up, my parents were both educators at the Wisconsin School for the Blind. And so as I grew up, that was the family business, right? So my mom was an orientation and mobility instructor, and my dad was a teacher for physical education, and he taught and coached all of the sports there. And I think, Kirk, you maybe crossed paths with some of the folks from that school too over the years. Is that right? Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes, absolutely. Kate Sonka: Yeah. So, you know, at the time it was wonderful. It gave me great insight into what is inclusive education, what does that look like, and what sorts of learning environments are we creating for students and teachers, and how do we do that? Of course, as a child I wasn't really thinking about it that way. It was more, yay, it's my birthday and my dad's going to let me have my birthday party, you know, in the gym or the swimming pool or something like that. But gave me a really good grounding in that work. And then over time, you know, my background is actually in linguistics and language acquisition, and for a time was really intentional, or thought I would be working with language learners in the classroom at the higher education level. And then through a series of things ended up working at a couple of different universities in the academic technology offices. And so really looking at, what is the tech that faculty are using for teaching? And of course, how is that accessible? Is the technology accessible? And more importantly, are the materials and some of the teaching practices or pedagogy accessible for disabled students in the class, and really thinking about what that looks like. So I didn't necessarily enter accessibility thinking, yes, this is what my parents did, this is what I'm going to do. It was sort of a windy path, and all of a sudden — I guess it's been more 12-ish years now — everything kind of came together and it made sense. I'm here for inclusive teaching and learning, whether that is about disability and accessibility, whether that's about language learners in our classrooms. And what is it that faculty and educators need to be able to create these environments? And so that's kind of the backstory. But ultimately, through my work at Michigan State University, working in the academic tech office in one of the colleges there, started to hear about Teach Access. And this was ten years ago, where it's now 2026, which is our 10th anniversary year. And I'll talk a little bit more about who we are and what that looks like, but I'll turn it to Mindy so she can introduce herself as well. Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. Mindy Kolin: Hi. Yeah. Thanks so much, Kate. This is Mindy speaking. So nice to be here, Kirk. I have been with Teach Access for four years now, and I've spent the better part of 30 years in the nonprofit sector. Well, my very first job out of college was working for an employment agency for people with disabilities that was based in New York City, that was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, Orin Lehman, and a bunch of other really cool people. It no longer exists. But as Kate mentioned, the universe — you know, 25 years later, I was looking for a job, and on Indeed I saw this job description for an organization called Teach Access,

  7. Jul 8

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Daria Marmer, Founder, Cookie Voice Recipes

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Daria Marmer, Founder, Cookie Voice Recipes https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-07-08-2026/ In this warm episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk, a lifelong, enthusiastic blind cook, talks with Daria Marmer, founder of Cookie Voice Recipes, a hands-free, voice-first cooking app built with blind and low-vision cooks in mind. A product manager and Cordon Bleu-trained cook, Daria explains how the app began as a fix for her own annoyance, dirty hands, no way to check the recipe, and, after she showed a prototype to the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts, became something far bigger. She built it herself using AI coding tools (Codex and Claude). Users pull any recipe into a clean, ad-free view and simply ask "Cookie" questions out loud, how much sugar, read the ingredients, what's step three, even "I ran out of sour cream, what can I use instead?", with AI answers grounded in the actual recipe. Kirk, who brailles out recipes on a Perkins Brailler and clips Braille pages from Cook's Illustrated, connects the app to two audiences: older people losing vision to conditions like diabetic retinopathy, and young blind people setting up their first kitchens. Daria shares favorite feedback (a woman who no longer has to eat Stouffer's every night), the roadmap (Android next; partner-provided recipes for people brand-new to blind cooking, via the Carroll Center), pricing (a free tier plus a $3.99/month or $30/year AI tier), and where to find it, the App Store (iOS), chef@cookievoicerecipes.com, and @cookievoiceapp on Instagram. Kirk asks her back in six months. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a guest that I share a passion with, and that is for cooking and eating. And today I have Daria Marmer, who is founder of Cookie Voice Recipes. Hi, Daria. Daria Marmer: Hi. How are you? Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm very, very well. I'm very excited to talk about your project — the app that helps people who are blind and visually impaired cook efficiently and happily and seamlessly in their kitchens. I cook a lot. I'm a Braille reader. I have a notebook full of recipes that I brailled out on a Perkins Brailler. I have Braille pages cut out of Cook's Illustrated and Better Homes and Gardens magazines, which I get in Braille free from the National Library Service. And it's a big, untidy mess. And as I search through recipes and don't have them well organized, the favorites are all covered with remnants of cooking. So I'm very excited to start using the app. For those of you who don't know me, I am a blind person. My retina is detached. When I was five years old, I went to a school for blind children for second and third grade — learned my Braille skills, blindness skills: reading, writing Braille, using the long white cane, typing on a typewriter, so I could go to public school when I was ready, which was fourth grade, when I was nine. I'm the oldest of three siblings. When we turned ten, my mom told us we were responsible for making dinner for the family one night per week, and she would help us understand what we wanted to cook, and get the ingredients, and help us cook it. So I've been in the kitchen as a totally blind person for a long time. I will throw my brother under the bus to say that he made hot dogs and baked beans out of the can every week — he did not vary his menus. I was much more adventurous, and I cook a lot. My wife and I love, love to enjoy good food together. And I met Daria, and when I found out about your project — just so exciting. Want to share it with everybody who either loves to be in the kitchen as a blind person, or would like to be. And, Daria, I'm just going to turn it over to you and just ask you: where did the idea come from? What was the genesis? How have you developed it? Where is the app at today? And where do you see things going? So I'll hand you the talking stick. I'll reserve the right as host to pop in with random questions as they occur to me. So, it's all you. Daria Marmer: Thanks, Kirk. So, I come at this from the cooking and tech side of things. I went to culinary school a long, long, long time ago, and then have had a really wonderful career in technology. And a couple months ago I had this problem, which is: I would hate reaching for my cell phone when I was cooking, because my hands were all dirty. And so I would ask my family in the kitchen just to tell me what the next step was in the recipe, or how much of a certain ingredient I needed. Because the way recipes are written, they say 'add the sugar,' 'add the flour,' 'add the salt.' And then you're like, well, can you remind me how much sugar was that? So I used to ask my family those questions when I was cooking in the kitchen, and I realized, hey, why don't I solve this problem for myself? I prototyped a quick app on my laptop, and that was kind of going to be the end of it, until I had this thought, and I said, wait — not looking at my phone, that's kind of an annoyance for me. I am sighted. But for people who are blind and visually impaired, this could be a real game-changer. And so then I started doing a lot of research. I partnered with the Carroll Center in Newton, Massachusetts, and kind of showed them the prototype, and I said, hey, is this— would this be interesting? Should I go forward with this? And they were like, oh my gosh, yes, absolutely. And it was born. Dr. Kirk Adams: So, I was the president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, which was Helen Keller's organization. It was an honor to have the opportunity to lead the organization. But we're pretty publicly known, so I got contacted so often by big-hearted, lovely, well-intended sighted people who thought they had come up with a great solution to make the lives of blind people easier, without ever talking to a blind person, getting any feedback. And oftentimes it was, 'That's already a free app,' 'That's already taken care of,' or, 'We don't really need that.' So I just wanted to highlight the fact that you contacted a very reputable organization — the Carroll Center for the Blind, named for Father Carroll, in Newton, Massachusetts — and you got feedback, you got input. So, hats off to you on that. Daria Marmer: Yeah. I mean, it was so interesting. In my life, I've gone to hundreds of cooking classes now. And, as part of developing this app, I went to a cooking class that was specifically for people who had lost their vision. And I had never done a blind cooking class before. And it was really interesting and fascinating — just, I got to see firsthand some of the challenges that were involved in that. Because, you know, you have a Braille recipe next to you, you're completely dirty, you're going to completely mess that page up, it's going to become hard to read. So, for all of the reasons, I thought, this is really interesting. And then, yes, the teacher of that class saw the prototype, and she said, 'Yes, we should definitely— this app should exist.' And then that's when I said, okay, cool, I'll build it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Nice, nice. So, do you have the technical skills? Did you develop it yourself, or did you bring in app developers? Or what is the process of having an idea and doing something on your laptop, and then now it's an app that we can download on our phones? Daria Marmer: Yeah. So, I am a product manager by training. And so that means that I've been building software with the help of engineers for many years now. But I didn't really do a lot by myself — I didn't code a lot by myself. And recently, in the whole universe, this idea of vibe coding and AI agentic coding has come up, and I decided that I was going to do it myself and really use those tools to get this product out the door. And I've been proudly using both Codex and Claude to make this a reality. And I have done it myself. Dr. Kirk Adams: Amazing. And so, tell us about the app. What's the user experience like? What can I accomplish in the kitchen using it? Daria Marmer: Sure. So, the first thing that I have to dispel — people are like, 'I don't want to just cook cookies.' Yes, I know. This is not an app— just a cookbook. This is not a bunch of cookie recipes. Okay? So the idea is, you can pull basically any recipe that you have into the app. You can do that through our share extension, you can do that through copy-pasting the text, you can do that by finding the URL and then putting in the URL, or using the baked-in search that is in the app already — selecting the recipe that you want, and then it'll pull it into a really nice recipe view. And in this recipe view, you've gotten rid of all of the ads and junk that often clutter recipe pages. So it's really, really simple. So that's just the first thing that is amazing about it. And then, once you have that, then you can start asking any questions that you want, out loud. And you can say, 'Cookie, how much sugar do I need?' 'Cookie, read me all of the ingredients.' Or, 'Cookie, what's step three?' And it will give you answers based on everything that's in the recipe. And one of the things that I think is really cool is, you can actually stretch it further, and you can say, 'Cookie, I just ran out of sour cream. What can I use instead?' And it will send that to AI and get an answer that is based on the recipe that you

  8. Jul 7

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Brandy Schantz, Author, Living Chronic

    🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Brandy Schantz, Author, Living Chronic https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-07-07-2026/ In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes back Brandy Schantz, possibly the show's very first guest, to talk about her forthcoming book, Living Chronic: Conversations That Changed Me, Lessons That Saved Me (Koehler Books, out August 24, 2026). A former U.S. Army intelligence officer turned consultant, Brandy recounts how a severe case of Crohn's disease, and then drug-induced lupus from the Humira treating it, cascaded into generalized dysautonomia (small fiber neuropathy, POTS, orthostatic hypotension) that cost her the ability to walk and, for a time, her identity as a lifelong athlete. She describes years of self-advocacy, cold-calling studies, reading medical journals, learning that the medical system rarely delivers a quick diagnosis, and how launching her Living Chronic podcast turned her guests' hard-won lessons into a lifeline. The book distills those lessons, each chapter built around a podcast conversation: "there is no Superman," you have to be the architect of your own care, and you must grieve your former self. Kirk connects it to his own experience of disability and the "spoon theory," and the two discuss caregiving (Brandy devotes a chapter to what her husband gave up) and the surge in disability since COVID. Now running again, she did the 50th Marine Corps Marathon, Brandy points listeners to the book on Amazon, through Koehler Books, or via brandyschantz.com, and to her rebranded podcast, Living Chronic: Ability at Work. Kirk notes his own forthcoming book, The Disability Dividend. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: 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. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a repeat guest, Brandy. You may have been the first-ever guest on the podcast, so welcome back. Today we have Brandy Schantz. Brandy is author of a book that's coming out on August 24th. It's called Living Chronic: Conversations That Changed Me, Lessons That Saved Me. And it's available for pre-order now. And we're going to be digging into it, Brandy, and hearing all about the book. So, welcome. Brandy Schantz: Oh, thank you so much for having me again. I'm excited to learn. I might have been the first person on this podcast — I do remember when you were starting it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I think that's right. And Brandy and I met via LinkedIn, where I spend some quality time every day, and have for 18 years or so. She's one of 30,000 fabulous connections on my LinkedIn who care about accessibility, disability inclusion, assistive technology, human rights, social justice, and all those good things. So, great to have Brandy here. As for me, if you don't know me, I'm the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. I currently have a couple of official hats. I'm the managing director of my consulting practice, which is called Innovative Impact, LLC. I am also executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, and we'll be launching our Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on August 3rd. So, a couple of big dates in August — one for each of us. And I have had a number of really in-depth conversations with Brandy since we've met, and I knew she was working on a book. She would mention it from time to time, but it's here, it's coming — so, available for pre-order. So, Brandy, I'd just like to hand it over to you, if you could, for the listeners who didn't tune in to that first episode: if you could tell us a little bit about your life journey and what brought you to the work that you do. And then we'll dig into hearing all about the book, Living Chronic. So, it's all you. All right? Brandy Schantz: Yeah, certainly. So, I came into this world, as it were, like so many of us do — quite suddenly. I was an Army officer. I served as an intelligence officer in the Army. And then, like most of us, I went on to work in consulting. And while I was working in consulting, I was suddenly diagnosed with a very severe form of Crohn's disease. And it really prevented me from getting to work. And, of course, the job I did was very classified — pretty much everything I did was top secret, most of it compartmented, and many other things. So there was nothing I could do from home. And this was before 2020, so we weren't really talking about work-from-home that often. And I was faced with a situation where I needed to figure out what I was supposed to do, because bills don't pay themselves, and I made a career change to accommodate my Crohn's disease. During that time frame, I started having some severe symptoms, and we just didn't know what it was. And over 19 months, I slowly deteriorated until I lost my ability to walk. Dr. Kirk Adams: What were some of the early manifestations? You said you started experiencing symptoms — can you talk a bit? Brandy Schantz: Well, for me, it was— I kept describing it at first as overtraining syndrome, because I was an athlete. I've always been an athlete, and I had been training for Ironman Chattanooga 70.3. So I thought, oh, here I am in overtraining syndrome again. I get myself in trouble a lot, I love to overdo things, I'm well known for that. So I wouldn't have been surprised, except that I was not getting any better. I still was having difficulty running. I wasn't recovering. I started getting a lot of shortness of breath, some chest pains. And at that point in time, when this started, it was 2020. So I kept going — you know, I got in that long car line that we all got into so I could get my nose swabbed for COVID, thinking, oh, maybe it's COVID, but I never tested positive. And I was doing what I was supposed to as a Crohn's patient. I was immunocompromised, so I stayed at home like I was supposed to, and just couldn't figure out why I kept getting shortness of breath, chest pains. I was also getting rashes, and couldn't run, which was unusual for me. I've been a runner my whole life. So this sudden inability to run, I couldn't quite understand. And in 2021, things just significantly got worse, and the rashes became worse. I couldn't go outside because the sun would give me a really terrible rash. I started getting severe mood swings and couldn't really think properly. At one point my husband said it felt as if my entire personality had changed. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, wow. Brandy Schantz: And as everything kept worsening— the not being able to run became not being able to walk. My ability to move, my mobility, was continually deteriorating, and my muscles and joints were so severely tight, inflamed, that I would try to go get a massage and they couldn't massage the knots out of my muscles at all. And my joints were just so inflamed, I could scream at any moment and cry. It was terrible. So I finally lost my ability to walk. And I had kept going to doctors and finally said, 'Hey, guys, this is just not normal. I can't walk, I'm laying on a couch here.' And a friend of mine recognized some of the symptoms and sent me to her neurologist. And he was nice enough to get me in very quickly. And that's where I learned I was suffering from drug-induced lupus, due to the Humira I was taking for my Crohn's disease. So once I got off of that, I did get my ability to walk back pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get back to my athletics, which for me was a big problem, because it's something I love. It's how I deal with stress and anxiety and just everyday life. It's what makes me happy. In addition, I was having trouble with fatigue, and I couldn't think clearly — a lot of brain fog. Doctors kept telling me it would just take a while for the Humira to get all out of my system: give it six months. But I gave it six months. I was patient, and I just was not getting better. And I kept dealing with the same symptoms: shortness of breath, a lot of dizziness. I was getting vertigo. I couldn't run. It made no sense to me. And I worked very hard over that time period, constantly. I was cold-calling different studies that were looking at people who had similar symptoms to my own. I was calling doctors all over, asking for different tests. I was reading medical journal articles, which is not my favorite. I did not study science, I studied business. So, unless you're talking exercise science, I typically don't really care. But at that moment in time, I cared a lot. And as I was going through it, I was just so depressed. I didn't know how to get out of bed in the morning, because I'd lost my entire life as I once knew it, and I just couldn't recognize my life. And I just couldn't seem to find anybody to help me and pick me up. And I thought, well, maybe what I should do now is start a podcast, and see if maybe I can help some people just like me. And maybe that'll help me to better understand how I can get up in the morning and keep pushing forward. You know, at that time— Dr. Kirk Adams: When did you start your podcast, Brandy? Brandy Schantz: I think I started that in— I think late 2022. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And it's called Living— Living Chronic? Brandy Schantz: And I learned so much from my guests. As I was going through this journey, it kept pushing me, and I'm learning, and I kept figuring out how to really advocate for myself at the doctor — who to call, what to do. And I did finally g

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Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams is a compelling podcast series that brings listeners into the world of accessibility, leadership, and social change through the lens of one of the most influential voices in blindness advocacy. Dr. Kirk Adams, former President and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind and a lifelong champion for the rights of people with visual impairments, hosts this insightful and inspiring program.

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