Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Reinhard Mabry Of Alphapointe On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have A Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Set big goals — the tendency of some people is to be cautious. I think having a big goal in mind and sharing that with your organization matters. It gives employees a clear understanding of your intentions; it makes clear where you want to go and how everyone can work help to get us there. We’ve created a scorecard and a dashboard for departments, which provide a clear understanding of the goals and what metrics we need to hit to make progress towards achieving the goals.
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 Reinhard Mabry.
Reinhard Mabry is the president and chief executive officer of Alphapointe, which is the national non-profit organization dedicated to empowering people with vision loss to achieve their goals and aspirations. Manufacturing tens of millions of products annually, Alphapointe is one of the largest employers of people who are blind in the U.S. with more than 400 employees, more than half of whom are blind or visually impaired. Mabry has worked for organizations in the blindness community for more than 25 years, including serving as the president of the National Association for the Employment of People Who Are Blind.
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?
I’ve been in the blindness field for more than 25 years, going back to 1994 in Tallahassee after getting my MBA from Florida State. At that time, the focus was on business development to help nonprofits that employed and served people with disabilities get jobs. We had some success and were fortunate to be able to do that. I found that the work was enjoyable, but at some point it wasn’t fulfilling because I was removed from the employees who secured these positions because I wasn’t working at an agency that did the actual work — I was a middleman. So, I went to work for an agency directly and was able to witness the actual people getting jobs for the work that we did. I went to work for an agency in North Carolina and had success there. Then, I noticed that our field is a little bit of a fraternity, so if you have success, you start to get noticed and people look at you as a candidate for other jobs at other agencies. I was recruited to come to Kansas City to work at Alphapointe, which is one of the nation’s largest employers of people who are blind as well as one of the largest providers of rehabilitation/training for people of all ages with low vision.
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 I value the most are: being goal-oriented, being focused on service and integrity. I’ve always been a very goal-oriented person, whether it was a yearly goal, a three-year goal, a five-year goal — I do that both for myself and as it relates to business endeavors and it’s served me very well. At Alphapointe, we create four-year strategic plans that set a very clear direction for us. We invest resources — time, money, people — to accomplish the elements of our strategic plan. Frankly, any leader or company that wants to achieve something of substance needs to be goal oriented.
Alphapointe is a mission-based organization, which is obviously different from a for-profit organization. We’re in business with a different purpose and goal in mind. Our mission is about people, so our focus needs to be on service and how people are being served as well as how people who are blind will succeed. I’ve been very focused on service and how people will succeed and thrive both with Alphapointe and beyond.
Integrity is a trait I’ve carried throughout my life that was ingrained in me by my parents — the notion that you’re only as valuable as your word. I’ve always lived by the mindset that you, “do what you say and say what you do.” If you do that consistently, you’re known as a person of integrity and honesty. With that comes trust and you can’t be a leader if you’re not trusted.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
The most intense struggle I’ve had was our acquisition of an agency in New York and the subsequent move to another location. The agency that had served people who are blind in New York for a very long time started to see a decline in revenue. That caused a significant amount of service debt and the organization’s debt was increasing five to six points per year. That’s why Alphapointe entered the picture and acquired the organization.
The owner of the building clearly wanted to convert the building into a white collar office park. They didn’t want us there. You could see it in the faces of the other tenants and the landlord — we were simply in their way. Something had to be done because rents were escalating, but we needed to protect people’s jobs. We had about 200 people who were at risk of losing their jobs and that was critical because we are the only industrial employer of people who are blind in New York City and the largest employer of people who are blind in the state. These were people who had known these jobs for the vast majority of their professional careers and they didn’t have a haven anywhere else. If Alphapointe went away, the things we did couldn’t be repeated somewhere else in the city. We knew that if we didn’t find a permanent facility, we would get eaten up by overhead. The cost of the building was going to consume all of the available margin. We looked at rent options, we looked at transportation, we looked at where people lived. The real challenge for us was being able to get a loan and then navigating the transition — getting the building bought, renovated and ready for Alphapointe to occupy. In the early days, we were doing renovations and repairs while employees were working. We told our staff, “If you just trust us, every day will get better.” And, it did. But, it was a lot of stress and worry. The outcome of that process was that only one part-time employee lost their job and then we hired more than 20 additional staff members within the following year. It was a “win” and it’s been an incredible “win” ever since.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
We have a number of exciting projects we’re working on, but I’ll limit my answer to a few. One is the launch of our patented, life-saving devices. In less than five years, we’ve secured eight patents or patent-pending statuses for products that we make in the tactical/medical sector. Consider this — how many other nonprofit organizations are developing their own intellectual property, receiving patents for those items and then bringing those items to the marketplace?
We won a patent for the Tactical Mechanical Tourniquet in 2018 and we’ve sold more than 500,000 since it was introduced to the marketplace. This is a device that saves lives. We added the Tactical Pneumatic Tourniquet in 2019 and is now starting to gain a foothold. In 2021, we launched the RISE Splint, which is being carried by soldiers in the U.S. military. We recently received another patent for the Junctional Hemorrhage Control Plate, which is available under the commercial name of “TQ-RAM.” Each one of these items is a huge leap forward for soldiers and first responders. It’s a great product line because these items are made by people who are blind to help people serving on the front lines.
The second item is that we’re expanding operations in both Kansas City and New York. In Kansas City, we’re making significant requests for grant donations to expand our facility because we’re running out of room to expand our plastics injection molding operation, which has tremendous potential to create additional jobs for people who are blind. In New York, we just finished renovations that will allow us to grow our rehabilitation and training services. We’re pursuing a five-year contract to deliver adaptive technology services to New York residents. We’re excited about that because we’re expanding our reach of services to Long Island and the Hudson Valley, which means helping more people who are blind.
The third item is continuing to develop our neighborhood in Kansas City. Dating back many years, we knew that we were the largest landowner in this part of the city. We understood that if we were going to see the neighborhood improve, we would need to be the catalyst. So, we acquired additional property and have worked with a number of partners, including the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, the Mid-America Regional Council, local community neighborhood associations and many others. We’ve had very positive discussions about how to invest in the community in order to improve the amenities and services within our neighborhood.
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?
As an initiative that the business community is pursing, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion almost always seems to focus on race or gender and those are certainly important. However, what rarely is discussed is disability. That’s unfortunate because it’s a significant issue and it crosses each of the other areas. You can become a member of the disability community by walking home from work and getting hit by a car or by having a health issue. And yet, we don’t talk about disability enough. Alphapointe is an organization that focuses on the inclusion of people who are blind in society as a whole. We’re committed to that mission and our board of directors reflects that. We have five board members who are blind and they are there to help represent the needs of the blindness community and to ensure that they have a voice. We want to see more blind leaders in our organization and in our industry throughout the country. Alphapointe has increased the number people who are blind in positions of leadership, management and supervisory levels and I’m excited to continue to further that effort. We also encourage that notion across the community and across the country through our business relationships. Focusing on DEI and, in particular, the accessibility component is in Alphapointe’s organizational DNA. In fact, Alphapointe’s been committed to this concept since our founding in 1911. So, we were pursuing DEI strategies long before the vast majority of organizations around the country.
A good example of this in the modern era is that we created a team focused on 508 compliance, which is dedicated to assisting both for-profit and non-profit organizations to ensure that their website content meets or exceeds Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We’re on the frontlines of ensuring that people who are blind and people with other disabilities can access online content. We have more compliance specialists than any of our peer organizations in the nation. By definition, we’re facilitating a more inclusive online environment by providing this invaluable resource.
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?
I’ve always thought that inclusion simply means to be welcoming. The sad reality is that 70 percent of people with disabilities are not included in the workforce. They’re sitting on the sidelines even though they want to be in the game. When you have that large of a percentage of a population underrepresented in the labor market, we’re obviously all collectively doing something wrong. We’re simply not being inclusive and we’re not being welcoming. We need to take steps to change that. Given the workforce challenges of the business community today coupled with the fact that we’re at a unique inflection point in our nation’s history — we have an incredibly low unemployment rate, yet we have all these people sitting on the sidelines. Employers need to embrace this population. They want to work. They want to contribute. They want to provide for themselves and for their families. We can help employers do 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?
The simplest examples are entryways or having braille print or large print on elevators or doorways. Where it’s less visible or obvious are things like making sure your website is accessible, making sure apps on phones are accessible — things of that nature. Almost all smartphones issued today have significant accessibility features built into the phones, but some of the apps are not accessible. There’s been a fair amount of legal action surrounding websites and apps because they weren’t made with accessibility in mind. In Alphapointe’s case, we make jobs accessible through technology such as large print screens and accessible software. An important item to note is that we’ve found accessibility is often very individualized. It doesn’t cost much money, but it does take an investment of time. However, once you go through that process, we’ve consistently found that blind employees will be very successful and serve as outstanding staff.
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.
Much of our culture today is about being politically correct, which leads to people being fearful of saying, “the wrong thing.” I’ve observed people shying away from people who are blind or people with disabilities because they’re afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. I’ve always found that the most important thing you can do is to speak directly to the individual. Ask them what they want and what they need. Offer to help. All of this amounts to treating people with disabilities with respect and creates a welcoming environment.
Employers also need to realize that the cost of creating an accessible environment is not substantial. As an example, if you have a job where 90 percent of the work is performed on a computer, the software to enable a person who is blind to be able to successfully perform the duties of that job is not expensive. It’s easy to setup. These pieces of software will even work with proprietary software and we’ve found very few examples where they don’t. Simply being mindful of work environments not being cluttered makes a big difference for people who are blind. Providing an orientation of the workplace is important. These are things most organizations already do — they just need to tweak them a bit to accommodate people with low vision.
I would add that Alphapointe is here to help organizations around the country with accessibility. We understand that, initially, organizations may feel overwhelmed because this is a world they aren’t familiar with. We’re here to help human resource departments. We’re here to help supervisors so that they don’t need to figure out everything on their own. We are here to serve as a resource and we’re happy to do so because it means we can all drive down the unemployment rate for people who are blind or have other disabilities.
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?
As an example, in the office products division of Alphapointe where we make everything from sophisticated tactical pens for the U.S. military to wax pencils, every piece of equipment has been adapted so that a person who is blind can use it. But, even in our case, that was a process because it involved changing mindsets and overcoming misconceptions. Shortly after I started my career at Alphapointe, I visited with people in that division and told them that they would all have the opportunity to run every single piece of equipment that we currently had or that we would buy moving forward. And, many were skeptical. Fast forward to today and that’s what has happened. It requires training and, most importantly, it requires a commitment. Every piece of equipment that we buy has accessibility features built into it. When we bought a machine that prints on the caps that go on top of plastic prescription bottles, the company had never built a machine like that to be operated by a person who is blind. We walked through our expectations and any modifications that needed to be made. At the end of the day, it wasn’t nearly as extensive as you might expect. The initial conversation can seem overwhelming, but once you actually have the discussion, you find that these adjustments are much easier than you initially anticipate.
Another change we made initially was to involve our blind employees on our safety committee and to have them regularly participate in our walk-throughs of various workspaces. Because of that, we have an extraordinarily strong safety record. We’ve gone over a year without a safety issue. And, when incidents do happen, they actually most often involve a person with sight. I’m incredibly proud of Alphapointe’s work safety record.
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”?
Get out on the floor and meet the people — if you go out and meet the people, they will support you in both the good times and the tough times. They will energize you. When I give tours in our building, people are usually surprised that I know the names of our employees. To me, it’s essential. Many CEOs don’t take the time to get to know their employees. I think that matters because we’re in a people business. It’s important that they know me and for me to know them, so they know I’m approachable.
“Hire slow and fire fast” — I didn’t follow this practice early in my career. Selecting new team members should be done carefully. In an enterprise with limited resources, the need to fill a spot sometimes caused me to rush hiring decisions. There were many mistakes made along the way. And deciding when someone is not a good fit can be difficult. I wish I had learned sooner to make those decisions more quickly. In the social service sector, you want to help people, so you tend to take longer to make decisions to let someone go. Often, the employee is just as frustrated as the employer. Once both sides come to that realization, the employee leaves and, in many cases, they’re happier. I recall occasions where former employees returned to thank us because their situation improved from their perspective. Doing that more quickly is better for everyone.
Overcommunicate — in the midst of the pandemic, it was obvious how important it is to communicate. We kept people informed of what was happening and how we were responding. It provided assurance to our team that we took their safety seriously. Early on in my career, I was more cautious. I wanted to wait until I had all the answers. It’s okay to admit you don’t have all the answers. In fact, I believe people respect you more for admitting that you don’t have everything figured out. At the outset of the pandemic, we had to acknowledge that there were unknowns and that we were working on the problem together.
Set big goals — the tendency of some people is to be cautious. I think having a big goal in mind and sharing that with your organization matters. It gives employees a clear understanding of your intentions; it makes clear where you want to go and how everyone can work help to get us there. We’ve created a scorecard and a dashboard for departments, which provide a clear understanding of the goals and what metrics we need to hit to make progress towards achieving the goals.
Make it fun — one of our values at Alphapointe was to simply make things fun. We see each other for 8–10 or more hours per day, five days per week — sometimes longer. Having fun is important. You won’t keep people engaged without having fun. We celebrate our professional sports teams with pep rallies. We have contests between the factories, opportunities for people to dress up for holidays and other activities throughout the year. For our holiday parties, we incorporate a talent show which is great. People let their guard down and demonstrate their talents. People will make up songs that poke lighthearted fun at ourselves. The talent of our people is amazing — we had a deaf-blind person play the piano exceptionally well. We have people who are normally shy who will sing beautifully. We saw a tangible difference in the camaraderie and closeness of our staff when we encouraged people to have fun as a part of the job.
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 not necessarily a direct quote, but my dad told me early on that you’re only worth the value of your word and that honesty is the most important thing. We all stray and get in trouble from time to time. When I was 16, I damaged my car and didn’t want to fess up to what happened. My dad knew and was disappointed — not because of the wreck, but because I hadn’t been honest about it. We had a very heart-felt conversation that was very important to both of us. He made it clear that my integrity was the most important thing and that I maintain that. Integrity is the currency for leaders and it’s been important to me ever since.
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. :-)
If every board for a Fortune 500 company — or, any organization for that matter — had at least one person with a disability on the board, I believe strongly that the conversation would change in a very material way. Right now, the conversation about DEI is very important, but disability is rarely a part of that conversation. If organizations had a board member with a disability, then it automatically becomes part of the conversation. It would change the way all organizations look at the world and how they look at themselves, particularly as it relates to being a welcoming environment for people with disabilities. That a company or organization is inclusive toward people with disabilities really matters and it’s important to most people — including those outside the disability community.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
People can view our website at alphapointe.org and can access us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn from the website.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
