Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: John G Samuel Of Ablr 360 On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Lean into your disability — For way too long, I hid from my disability and I carried the burden of that. The moment I “came out of the closet a blind person,” it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulder.
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 John Samuel.
John Samuel is the CEO and cofounder of Ablr, a disability inclusion and accessibility business working to remove barriers that hinder people with disabilities from all aspects of life. In college, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic and degenerative disease that caused him to lose his eyesight. After struggling to belong and succeed in the sighted world, John now empowers both individuals and organizations to overcome accessibility challenges and build more inclusive environments. Learn more at www.johngsamuel.com.
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?
My journey really starts when I was in high school, and I started noticing challenges driving at night. I dreaded going out once it got dark, but my desire to hang out with my friends and belong would force me to drive, even though it scared me sometimes. After high school, I left my hometown of Cary, NC and headed up to Richmond, Virginia for college. As I was walking around the urban campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, I was constantly bumping into things, and my shins were a collage of cuts and bruises, and I realized that something was seriously going on with my eyes, so I saw a specialist. That’s when I was diagnosed with a degenerating eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, or RP for short, and was told I was going blind. As a young person, this news was devastating, and I didn’t know how to deal with this information, and my actions led to me failing out of college.
Afterwards, I ended up going back home to North Carolina, and moved in with my high school friends who were going to NC State University, but I was ashamed to tell them that I failed out of college, and that I was going blind. So, to keep up with impressions, I enrolled in classes at NC State, through a continuing education program. Eventually, I graduated, but my sight was continuing to fade and driving during the day was getting harder. There was no reliable public transportation in the Raleigh area, and this was a pre-Uber era, so if you couldn’t drive, I didn’t think you would ever be able to live there. That would lead me on a global adventure, which would take me around the globe, with stints in Bengaluru, New York City, Douala (Cameroon), and then Washington, DC.
I moved to Washington to pursue my MBA, after successfully launching a telecom infrastructure company in Cameroon. I was also successful at keeping my secret of going blind from most people in my life, but once I started to attend the George Washington University for graduate school, I started to openly talk about my diminishing sight. As a result, I felt like I was able to be my true self for the first time, and I was even able to open my heart and find love, when I met my wife in the MBA program.
Even though I was open about talking about my sight in my personal life, I thought employers would see it as a liability. So, as I was looking for jobs after my MBA, I struggled. I didn’t know how to advocate for myself or disclose my disability. That led to a string of rejection letters. I eventually landed on my feet, when I joined a fintech startup, but that job didn’t last exceptionally long before it folded.
I found myself without a job again, but by this time, I had a wife, baby, and a new house, all of which aren’t cheap, and the stress of it all caused my sight to go even faster. Up until this point, I was able to do my work on a computer, using inverted colors, like white text on a black background, and magnification software, which I could make text big. Now, nothing worked, and I thought my career was over.
That’s when I heard about a software developed by SAS, a large data science organization, which was designed to help people who are blind and low vision to visualize graphs and charts using sounds. I thought this was super cool, but the coolest thing was that it was created by a guy named Ed Summers, who had the same eye condition as me, and lived in my hometown of Cary, NC, the same place I didn’t think anyone blind could ever live.
After a serendipitous encounter, I met Ed, and he introduced me to the world of accessibility, and showed me that my career wasn’t over. He also introduced me to an organization called LCI, which happened to be one of the largest employers of people who are blind in the country, and it was located just seven miles from where I grew up. When I met with the President of LCI, he talked about how he wanted to launch a modern technology services business that would create upward mobility for people who were blind, so I joined them to build it. Little did I know that would become the origin of Ablr, the company that I’m now cofounder and CEO of, and where our mission is to remove the barriers for people with disabilities in all aspects of life, including education, entertainment, and employment.
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?
The three character traits that have helped me throughout my life are my risk taking, adaptability, and resiliency.
As a kid, I felt like I was taking a risk every time I got behind the wheel at night. But that same risk appetite helped me make the move from my hometown to Bengaluru after college. Although I am of Indian descent, I was born and raised in the US. So, when I moved out to Bangalore, I had only visited the vibrant city once before. The only thing I knew for sure was that I could get a car and driver pretty easily, and at the time I thought that was my biggest barrier to having a career.
It was a risky move for me to leave my friends, family, and comfort zone, to move to a place that in many ways was much less accessible than my hometown, where I couldn’t drive. Every time I tried to cross the street, I was putting myself at risk from being hit by a car, falling into a sewer drain, or getting bit by a stray dog. But once I learned how to navigate the city with my diminishing sight, I gained a new level of confidence, which carried with me as I traveled the globe. It’s those experiences I gained which allowed me to move up in my career and become the leader I am today.
My adaptability was my secret power which allowed me to hide the fact that I couldn’t see, but it also helped me deliver value for the companies that I worked with. I don’t think there is a traditional career path, but my path was anything but normal. I began my career working in corporate finance for a tech firm in India, then I was educating New York City employees about their retirement plans during the Recession. The lessons I learned to be able to adapt to these quite different experiences ultimately prepared me to adapt to life in Cameroon, where I was asked to start a new telecom infrastructure company from scratch. I had to quickly adapt to a new country, language, and business, all while never even seeing a cellphone tower before I moved out to Cameroon.
My ability to adapt is why I have been able to be a successful entrepreneur in two different ventures and generate returns for my investors.
My life is a story of resilience, bouncing back after multiple failures. Some people take pride in the fact that they never fail, well I take pride in the fact that I’ve failed a lot, but I keep getting back up. From failing out of college, to struggling to find a job, it was my resiliency that allowed me not to give up. This was in full force when I was working for a fintech startup organization after my MBA. Everyone in the organization lived in the UK, except me who worked from home in Washington DC. I would start my day at 4:30am, to work as closely aligned with the other members of the team. I did this for three years. I didn’t mind, because I believed in the mission of the organization, but more importantly I felt like I didn’t have many other options because I was visually impaired. So, when one month’s salary didn’t hit my bank account, I didn’t flinch. But as this continued to happen month after month, and my complaints and pleads went unanswered by my employer, I found myself in a $70,000 deficit, before being told that the company had folded.
The stress of this financial burden was only magnified by the fact that my wife and I had just purchased a home, had a mortgage, and welcomed our first child. The stress of this caused my sight to go faster, and I could no longer see.
This could easily break anyone. Don’t get it twisted, it put me in an extremely hard place. But it was my resiliency that allowed me to keep moving when every being of my body wanted me to stay down. Thank goodness I did, because since that lowest point in my life, I have experienced higher highs than I could ever have imagined.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
One of my greatest work struggles was also a life struggle, and that was learning to learn as a blind person. When I could no longer see the computer screen and navigate a computer using my eyes and clicking a mouse, I honestly thought my career was over. I had never met another person who was blind, so I didn’t know how they use technology like computers and smartphones, without being able to see.
So, when I met Ed Summers, who was blind and who had a successful career as a computer scientist, I had hope that my career wasn’t over. The first time I met him, I was shocked he navigated his iPhone. He was listening to it, instead of looking at it. He was using an assistive technology called a screen reader to communicate what was on the screen, as he moved his fingers across the smooth screen of the phone. But I couldn’t understand what the words were that were coming out of the phone, because he was listening to it super-fast. I mean, so fast that it sounded like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal, and it hurt my ears.
Because he was able to listen so fast, he was able to send emails and text messages at the same speed as someone who could see, and in some cases faster. When it came to using a computer, he relied on his ears for that as well, but only used a keyboard to navigate, rather than a mouse.
This showed me that I could maintain the speed of my work, using the essential tech I needed for my job, like computers and smartphones. I just needed to learn how to use them as someone who was blind.
The first thing I started to do was train my ears to listen faster. I did this by listening to audiobooks, and gradually started increasing the speed. Eventually, I was listening at three times the normal speed, and was able to crush books in just a few hours.
Listening faster was just half the battle, I also had to learn how not to use a mouse and accomplish everything using a keyboard. This required learning different shortcut keystrokes. Initially I thought if I had a list of all the shortcut keystrokes, it would make it easier, but that wasn’t the case. Just like learning to listen faster, I had to spend time getting more reps on the keyboard. I also found myself trying to strain and use my eyes to see the screen, so I turned off the monitor. This took patience and dedication, but I knew that if I invested the time to become proficient at using a screen reader, I would be able to continue my career, and I was right.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
One of the most exciting projects that we are working on right now is the launch of Ablr Works, which is our workforce development program. Our mission with Ablr Works is to train people with disabilities to get skilled up and job ready, so that they can be successful in the workforce. We are starting off collaborating with people who are blind and training them to become digital accessibility testers, which is a role that is highly sought after.
We signed a contract with the North Carolina Division of Services for the Blind, to offer this first of its kind training program, and our first cohort of eight candidates started in October. We designed this program to be virtual, so that we could reach folks who are in rural parts of the State, as well as removing the transportation barrier that limits many people with disabilities.
Candidates of this program are going through a sixteen week training program, which will be followed by a twelve week internship. In addition to taking part in technical training, candidates are also getting access to a mentor, taking part in job shadowing, and listening to guest speakers who are leaders in the field.
Creating jobs for others is what I’m most passionate about, and I’m excited to see how the first cohort turns out!
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?
In 2017, when I was looking for a job in the Raleigh — Durham markets, I was finally ready to disclose the fact that I had a disability. There were all these companies who claimed to have diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and were looking for candidates from underrepresented communities, and that gave me the confidence to bring my full self to my job search. But after reaching out to every company that had a DEI program, not a single organization got back to me. I felt like I didn’t check a box that they wanted to fill. These Diversity programs were focused on race, gender, and sexual orientation, and disability wasn’t something they were targeting.
So, after landing on my feet, and launching a digital accessibility business for LCI, one of the largest employers of people who are blind, I made it a point to get involved with the up and coming Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement that was taking place with the Raleigh Chamber in 2018. It was important to me that accessibility and disability inclusion was being talked about in the context of DEI. That was the inspiration for my 2021 Raleigh TEDx Talk, The IDEA of Belonging in a Diverse World. It was during this talk where I introduced the acronym IDEA, or Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility. We need accessibility to be included in the discussion, if we want to be truly inclusive of people with disabilities, and there is no diversity without disability.
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 have an inclusive work culture?
As a CEO of an organization, I am very aware of the business impact of our actions. That’s no different when it comes to building an inclusive work culture. When you are able to build a sense of belonging, employees will be less likely to leave the organization, even for a higher salary. This has a direct impact on your bottom line, because you won’t have to spend additional resources to recruit and train replacements.
Additionally, you will bring different voices to the table, who may have been excluded previously, and gain a new fresh perspective. As a CEO, it’s important to be innovative, and people from different backgrounds and experiences help cultivate this, and limits group think.
Another great benefit of creating an inclusive culture is the fact that people will be happier, and happier employees produce higher output. What organization doesn’t want that?
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? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Can you please share a few examples?
Reasonable accommodations are any changes to the job hiring process, interview, or job, which enables qualified candidates with disabilities to perform the essential tasks, to enjoy equal employment. It’s also important to note, that the reasonable accommodations should also not cause any undue harm or hardship. Many people think that providing reasonable accommodations are costly and time consuming, but in fact the majority of them are less than $500, and could actually benefit everyone, disability or not.
For instance, this can be as simple as providing alternative communication methods, like providing written instructions for employees who are hard of hearing or have to reference it often. In my case, this might mean providing me with a digital version, which I can read using my screen reader.
Another reasonable accommodation is allowing employees to work from home. The pandemic has shown us that many jobs don’t need to be done inside the walls of a traditional office, and for many people with disabilities, transportation is a significant barrier, so being able to work from home can be the difference between having a career or not.
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.
A lot of organizations only “check the box” when it comes to legal compliance of disability rights. What they don’t’ realize that if they stopped thinking about it from a risk management activity to an inclusion one, they would see employees who are more loyal, happier, and productive, all because they feel like they belong. This can be achieved with just a few best practices, but it starts with being intentional.
For instance, it can be as small as offering relief areas for service animals. This isn’t a requirement of organizations to allocate, but by providing a space where handlers can take their service animals to be relieved will go a long way.
Another thing that isn’t required, but has a big impact is forming community groups like a Disability Employee Resource Group, where people with disabilities are able to connect with others and find mentors, who can empathize with how to navigate the workplace with a disability. Companies will benefit from these groups, as much as the employees, because they will be able to create a sense of belonging for their employees with disabilities and gather feedback on ways that they can address barriers in the workplace.
Finally, businesses can provide disability inclusion training, which will educate all employees on the challenges some employees might face and how to properly support them. It takes out the fear of saying the wrong thing and focuses on the point that we are all people. When organizations are truly committed to learning how best to support employees with disabilities, it will not only resonate internally but also externally, and people will want to be part of that culture.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help promote disability inclusion? Can you share with us how the work culture was impacted as a result?
Our team is made up of over 70% of people who identify with having a disability, so we truly live the mantra of “Nothing about us, without us.” This means including people with disabilities in the design and development of your disability inclusion strategy. In our case, since we had people with disabilities helping to build everything from the ground up, we have tried to be intentional about how we are being inclusive for all people.
For instance, when we built out our website, we had people with disabilities providing feedback at every stage of the process, from design to post launch, to ensure that it was not only accessible, but also usable for people using assistive technologies. However, in case anyone does have an issue accessing content or material on our website, we have also included an accessibility statement in the footer of our site, so people can easily communicate any barriers that they might face when visiting our site.
The reason that having a usable website is so important is because that’s the first impression that many people have with our organization. That means when people are applying for jobs or just learning more about our team, they know immediately that we care and are intentional about creating an inclusive experience.
This intentionality around accessibility has now also seeped into our internal processes, including documents and presentations, which has made our teammates happy, and built a sense of belonging.
Additionally, we are “eating our own dogfood.” Everyone takes our Disability Inclusion: Putting Untapped Talent to Work training, which covers the history of disability, disability etiquette, the business case for disability inclusion, accommodations and adaptations, and assistive technologies. Through this training, our team now has a greater empathy for each other, and the community we serve.
This is our signature question that we ask in many of our interviews. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started My Career”?
Lean into your disability — For way too long, I hid from my disability and I carried the burden of that. The moment I “came out of the closet a blind person,” it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulder.
Listen to audiobooks — Growing up I hated to read, because it was difficult for me, and I was slow. However, once I was forced to listen to audiobooks it was game changing, and I wish I had started earlier, because I could have read so many more books and learned so much more.
Don’t compare yourself with others — When I was starting off my career, I spent too much time comparing where I was in my career in respect to my friends and other people I knew. No good comes from this, and it actually caused me to be sad, and not fully present in the moment. The moment I started to focus on myself, I was able to truly find success and happiness at work.
Build your network — When I was starting my career, it aligned with the emergence of social media, including LinkedIn. To much of my early social media usage was on Facebook, and I overlooked the power of building out a professional network on LinkedIn.
Get a mentor — In my early career, I thought I had mentors. They just happened to be friends who were further along in their career. They served a valuable purpose in my career, but not as much as true mentors. People who served as a backboard to bounce off ideas, to gain valuable insights from, and to help make connections are true mentors. I’m so happy to have mentors in my career today and wish I had developed this earlier in my career.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
I talk a lot about how “Proximity Builds Empathy” and this is a life lesson I live by. This means, by sharing our stories, and listening to others, we can build a better understanding of the challenges that others face. This was very much the case when I decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.
I decided to do the seven day trek with one of my best friends from high school. We had hired a guide company that came highly recommended by a friend that I had met while working in Cameroon. When registering, I mentioned that I had a visual impairment, but it didn’t seem to faze the guide. I reiterated this again, months later, when we were doing an inventory of our gear in preparation for the trek the following day, but the guide once again wasn’t fazed, and assured me that everything was going to be okay.
We had two guides who accompanied us on the trek, Brighton and Bacardi. Brighton led the way from the front, and Bacardi carried the rear. From the moment we started, I found myself spending more time tripping and falling on the ground and having to be lifted back up by Bacardi. So, when we were having our evening meeting and planning session for the next day, I wasn’t surprised when Brighton told me that he didn’t believe I was going to make it to the summit. However, as the second day came around, and I continued to face challenges staying upright I realized that we weren’t going to be successful if we continued the way we were operating. But as Bacardi, Brighton, and I spent more time together, they could understand my challenges and barriers more, and we started to work as a team, and we started to see progress. We realized that we needed better communication, so we started to talk more. We even started to think outside the box and became more innovative. This came in the form of taking the headlamp off my head, and putting it on the back of Brighton’s foot, and I started use what little sight I had to follow the light up the mountain.
The more empathy that Brighton and Bacardi had for me, we were able to see greater strides, and we eventually reached the summit as a team. This is just one example of how proximity builds empathy.
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. 🙂
I’m trying to inspire a movement for disability inclusion and accessibility, because disability can impact everyone at any time, and accessibility is necessary for a few, but useful for all. So, when you think about disability and accessibility this way, you realize that it touches everyone, and we can do an enormous good for the world.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
They can learn more about my organization Ablr at www.Ablr360.com and me at www.JohnGSamuel.com. Additionally, I’m quite active on LinkedIn and my social media handles are at @JohnGSamuel. And if they find themselves with an extra twelve minutes, they can check out my TEDx Talk!
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: John G Samuel Of Ablr 360 On How Businesses Make Accommodati was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.