Success Quote by Carl Karcher

There is a particular kind of corporate pride baked into this sentence: not the swagger of domination, but the satisfaction of making a system work for more people. Carl Karcher, a fast-food founder speaking in the language of operations, frames accessibility as engineering. The detail is the point. “Overlays for the keys” is unglamorous, tactile, and specific; it signals that inclusion isn’t a slogan but a modification to the machinery of everyday commerce. He’s not describing a charitable gesture so much as a redesign of labor.

The line also reveals what businesses often get wrong about disability: the obstacle isn’t the person, it’s the interface. By naming the Braille Institute, Karcher borrows institutional legitimacy and shows the company didn’t wing it. The subtext is risk management and credibility-building: we consulted experts; we built a tool; we can defend this as competent, not sentimental.

Then comes the telling corporate pivot: blind workers “take orders and help our guests.” The emphasis isn’t on the employees’ dignity alone, but on customer service and throughput. That phrasing places accessibility inside the brand promise, suggesting that inclusive hiring is compatible with (even beneficial to) the guest experience. It’s a savvy reframing: disability is not a disruption to the business model; it’s a test of how flexible the model is.

Context matters. In the late 20th century, before accessibility was a mainstream expectation and around the era of the ADA, this reads as both progressive and carefully transactional: inclusion, yes, but anchored in productivity, legitimacy, and the reassuring continuity of the register’s beep and routine.