Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Dominic Varacalli On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Don’t be afraid to take a step back to pivot in your career, when I was switching between startups and large companies a lot of times I had to “rebuild” my career at those companies, but it helped me learn completely new industries and practices I wouldn’t have otherwise.
As we all know, over the past several years there has been a great deal of discussion about inclusion and diversity in the workplace. One aspect of inclusion that is not discussed enough, is how businesses can be inclusive of people with disabilities. We know that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. What exactly does this look like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Are Disabled.”
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dom V, COO of AudioEye (NASDAQ: AEYE).
https://www.audioeye.com/author/dominic-varacalli/
Dominic Varacalli brings extensive experience straddling product and engineering teams both at his own startups as well as large, multinational companies, leading Citibank mobile product, Tagback, xTrends, serving as director at Kroger Digital, and most recently leading product and operations as a founding partner at Kickstand. Dominic has a Master’s Degree in Information Systems from the University of Cincinnati.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
In my career — which has been mainly focused on tech and product — I have bounced between Fortune 500 companies and super small startups. Coming to AudioEye made complete sense, as I was able to bring my diversity of experiences together of scaling companies and understanding the needs of small businesses. Now at AudioEye,
I can focus on important problems in the world by making the internet inclusive for everyone — including those with disabilities — which is a greater challenge than many people know.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
My top picks are definitely Grit, Compassion and Agility.
Grit is critical with startups. Working with limited resources, it takes grit to achieve goals, keep customers happy, overcome challenges and raise additional capital. That doesn’t really change even when you work for a public company like AudioEye — grit will help you solve the hard and long-term challenges such as accessibility.
Compassion is a big one for me. I try to work with people all day every day, truly understanding where they are coming from and what drives them. At AudioEye, where we focus on digital accessibility for all, we knew we had a gap internally needing more perspective from people with disabilities in everything we do as a company. We always worked with their needs in mind to create a more inclusive digital world — but we had to formalize their input on how we develop products, market to customers, and fix sites to create the best user experience. I helped start the AudioEye Alliance Community and spent 3–4 months meeting people with disabilities daily in which compassion played a huge role and is still critical today.
Agility is also super important. In business, you often don’t know where the ball is going, and you may need to pivot quickly. Always remain open and willing to change — and lead by example for your team.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work-related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
That was probably when I took the leap into starting a consulting company for startups. I am passionate about creating new businesses, and I left a stable career to help others do so. Then I realized I had to go into sales mode to find clients, which was slightly out of my comfort zone. I had to work really hard to gain trust and create products that are actually sell-able. That experience helped open my mind to understanding where the rubber meets the road for customers, and it’s made me understand our current sales team even better.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I’m the most excited about how AI will impact digital accessibility for persons with disabilities. Recently AudioEye launched a collaborative initiative with accessibility experts from the disability community on the effectiveness and impact of generative AI on identifying, fixing, and communicating accessibility issues that typically require expert review. AudioEye accessibility experts, including those who rely on assistive technology, found AI could reduce the time required to assess and correct a complex accessibility issue — such as determining whether a link is clear and accurate — by up to 10x.
That’s very meaningful and will be a gamechanger for expanding digital accessibility so persons with disabilities can properly view digital content and manage fundamental life tools like online banking, shopping, healthcare, communication, news access and more.
It’s also important to note that there are hundreds of millions of websites, so if we don’t make digital accessibility scalable and easy, we won’t make a difference.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about inclusion. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to promote Diversity and Inclusion? Can you share a story with us?
When I was Head of Engineering at Kroger Digital, I noticed that the industry for developers tended to be skewed towards male. As a gay man, it was extremely important to me that people from different backgrounds were represented and felt safe and included at their workplace.
We started to purposefully work with people who were underrepresented, bringing more diversity not only from the outside but also from the bottom up internally. We would go out to code schools or find people with an aptitude for engineering, and apprentice them for 6 months with very senior people at Kroger. That would sometimes lead to a job with Kroger or even outside the company. The goal wasn’t necessarily recruitment but rather for elevating people within the industry.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to promote an inclusive digital world?
Despite the spending power of people with disabilities — $7 trillion in the US alone — less than 3% of the world’s top one million websites offer adequate accessibility. That is astonishing and needs to change.
Let’s take this analogy — if I was walking around my city and I could only go into, say, a Starbucks because of my personal limitations or disability, I can’t enjoy all my city has to offer. Every shop on the block needs to be accessible to every individual — there need to be wheelchair ramps and electronic doors, for example. Only then can a person with disabilities have a fuller and more vibrant experience, with all the choices the rest of the world has. It’s the same thing online, where so many of us perform basic life functions such as online banking, making appointments, shopping, or participating in social media communities.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what this looks like in practice in terms of digital accessibility? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Can you please share a few examples?
With digital accessibility in mind, it’s ensuring that your website is designed and developed and maintained in a way for people to navigate like any other person. As someone who is not blind or color blind, I can see an image of a blue shirt. But if a user is relying on a text description of the item because they are visually impaired, if that shirt is described on the page as ‘midnight sky,’ what does that really mean? Using more simple terms in product descriptions is one step businesses can take.
Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? If you can, please share a few examples.
Having representation — people want to see themselves reflected in the places they work. Businesses should have hiring practices that represent the community they represent. Also, ensure your culture is welcoming to people who might not normally identify with all of the norms in your company community. And be very public with that acceptance. Personally, I didn’t see many LGBTQ+ leaders when I was coming up in my career which always concerned me that I could be capped in my career at certain companies. I make a point of being out at work the same way I am in the rest of my life to help create a space so everyone feels comfortable that they can also be ‘out’ at work.
This is our signature question that we ask in many of our interviews. What are your “A few Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started My Career”?
- I wish someone had told me to go where it’s messy. Over time I have discovered that those places offer the best opportunities to make an improvement and impact on other people’s lives.
- It’s ok to be at a job you don’t love for a while. One of my least favorite jobs is still the one that taught me the most about how to operate at a large scale well.
- Don’t be afraid to take a step back to pivot in your career, when I was switching between startups and large companies a lot of times I had to “rebuild” my career at those companies, but it helped me learn completely new industries and practices I wouldn’t have otherwise.
- Don’t be afraid to be authentic at work. I wasn’t out at work until I was 5 years into my professional career. It’s different for everyone, but I know I spend a lot of time at work and want to be my full self in and out of the office.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
It’s sounds simple, but I remember my father saying — usually when I was slacking off — “if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” Now that I am older, I do consider this when I am prioritizing my work. There is plenty of work I can just get done, but the important stuff is worth doing well and in a lot of cases the stuff not worth doing well, isn’t worth doing at all.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This one is easy — my movement would be a more digitally inclusive future for all.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicvaracalli/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Dominic Varacalli On How Businesses Make Accommodations For… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.