Kelvin Crosby: 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We're not waiting for change, we're investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:26

It's so good to see you, even though I can't see you. Today's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and I'm so excited that you're here At Investing in Accessibility. I'm your host, Kelvin Crosby, and let's get the guy that smells like lemons in here today. Chris Maher, how you doing, man?

Chris Maher: 0:42

Hey, Kelvin, how are you, m y friend? Good to be with you, as always.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:47

Yeah, I couldn't resist that intro after I'm smelling like coconut trying to take care of my skin. The last time I met you in person, you smelled like lemons, so I was like you know, this could be a really interesting intro

Chris Maher: 1:00

There you go, there you go.

Chris Maher: 1:02

Well, you know you're taking care of yourself. I like that. That's a good thing.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:06

Well, hey, we got to live beyond our challenges somehow, right, yep. Anyway, so today we got an awesome guest today. One thing is this guy had been rocking the accessibility world for years and has done some changes in the world. That man I'm like just so inspired by, truly by just the thoughts and the ideas and the creativity and being able to bring people together to create digital accessibility in many different ways, but I truly am excited about this. So, Chris, why don't you introduce us to our guest and what is he all about?

Chris Maher: 1:48

You got it. It's my pleasure to introduce our guest today, who I had the good fortune of meeting when I first launched Samaritan Partners the fund. But our guest today and I'll get into that story in a second but our guest today is my good friend, Mike Paciello, who's the Chief Accessibility Officer at AudioEye and one of the all-time good guys. So, Mike, welcome to the show today.

Mike Paciello: 2:13

Hey guys, listen, you're way, way, way, way too many kudos and nice statements. I'm not nearly as good as you guys are exclaiming.

Chris Maher: 2:23

Well, you're selling yourself short. And the quick story on how Mike and I met it was probably, I think, about six weeks after I had officially launched Samaritan Partners and I went to the M- Enabling Conference in the DC area and this was October of 2023. And Mike was kind and generous enough to take a meeting with me and we sat down and kind of in like the lobby area and Mike, that was the start of, for me, just a wonderful relationship and what has become a friendship, because, again, you've just been so generous with your time and your mentorship and your advice to me as I was getting Samaritan off the ground. And now it's whenever I see you out and about because you're at every industry event, it seems like and whenever we bump into each other it just brings a smile to my face when I see you. But again, you've been so kind to me and so generous with your time and your advice, and so I thank you for that and it's wonderful to have you here today.

Mike Paciello: 3:18

Hey, listen it's a privilege for me to be here honestly and, Chris, the relationship that you and I have has been nothing but positive, and I just run into so many colleagues and friends in this field of accessibility. It's hard now for me to say, hey, you need to touch base with Chris Maher, see if there's something that he can do there. So, yeah, this is great. I'm excited.

Chris Maher: 3:36

Well thank you, thank you for that. Let's start off because you have had, as far as I can tell, one of the longest careers in accessibility and in and around the disability community, and so I think where we start is if you could just give us a summary of that arc of your journey, both entrepreneurially and professionally, and then we'll kick things off from there. But let's start with kind of your background and that journey that you've been on.

Mike Paciello: 4:03

Yeah, so my career goes back to the early 80s, 83, 84, mid 80s, if you want. I worked for a fairly large computer company at that time, Digital Equipment Corporation, which has since been absorbed by HP. So I guess it started there. Believe it or not, I started in the stock room. That was my first job was working in the stock room.

Mike Paciello: 4:24

But I was in an environment where it was all computer technology and I was just, like you know, a sponge soaking up knowledge as I went and read every book, took every possible computer course that that DEC taught there. And about two years into it I was approached by one of my managers. I went from the stockroom into technical writing and going into technical writing, not only was it, it went back to some of my own roots as a sports journalist and writer when I was in school. So I got to write again. I get to, you know, key up on that passion. My manager as a writer came to me and said hey, mike, we've got this project. It's kind of a volunteer thing, but if you do it, you know it would be a big help. And the project involved taking our print documentation, computer documentation, down to the National Braille Press in Boston and then they would take the printed books and ultimately convert them into Braille. That's how I got started. So this is like 83, 84-ish I think, when I got started at that level.

Kelvin Crosby: 5:32

What was your first impression of the Braille embossing?

Mike Paciello: 5:35

It's funny that you bring that up, because I went down there and the director at that particular time was Bill Reeder and Bill said hey, Mike, while you're here, would you like me to give you a tour of the place? Now keep in mind, if you could try to keep these two stories, I've got a career that I'm as a technical writer and now learning the starting aspects of markup language for electronic documents. Goldfarb had just invented Gencode. It wasn't even being called SGML, which is the Standard Generalized Markup Language. Sorry if I'm getting a little technical here, at that time, but I was just starting with it.

Mike Paciello: 6:09

So I've got that going on and now I'm with Bill and he's giving me this, you know, lifecycle journey of how they take printed documentation and convert that into Braille, which at that time was they would use humans behind Braille typewriters and do that and then set it up for the typesetter, keeping in mind that what I think the average ratio of a print page to Braille is three to one.

Mike Paciello: 6:37

So for every single print page, there's three Braille pages that these folks had to commit. You get that done, converted, and then you push that to a printer, a printing press that in and of itself you know, with Braille printer and the bindery and everything. And I said to myself, just looking at that process, this is crazy. I mean it would take years in some cases. Some of the books that we produced at DEC were 700, 800 pages and they were multiple volumes. So it would take them years sometimes to produce a single volume in Braille. For maybe at that time, who knows, maybe 40, 50, 100 users who actually used, you know, digital computer systems anywhere and I thought this is crazy.

Chris Maher: 7:30

And, Mike, was it that experience where you were like I'm hooked, Like this, this is the direction I want to go around accessibility? Or did it take a couple more experiences to where you just committed yourself essentially full time to it?

Mike Paciello: 7:43

No, no no, that was the hook. That was the hook. I got excited about it right away because again now I'm learning electronic markup languages in documentation. This is what I do. So I say, I think, who knows why a bolt of lightning or something said. I wonder if I can take what I'm doing here with markup languages, which at that time we were outputting them to PostScript, which is a, you know, the predecessor of PDF. Okay, again, it gives you how old I really am. If I could do that and get it to these printers, why can't I do the same thing for Braille printers? That got me hooked and it's immediately. So I just started doing some research about others that were blind in the technology field, learning about Braille translation. So I taught myself that.

Mike Paciello: 8:39

I learned a lot more about markup languages and that led to me meeting George Kirscher I'm sure Kelvin, you know George right, he's very well known in this field.

Mike Paciello: 8:52

He had a small little startup business called Computerized Books for the Blind at that particular time and George and I got together. We formed an international working group of other colleagues in the field. Our first meeting was in Washington DC at a conference that was hosted by Judge Leonard Sahanek, which this is another whole story in and of itself, but ultimately that led us to meeting at CSUN, which I know you guys both know right, which was my first time going to that conference, which I think was in 88, 1988. And the conference started like 85. So it goes back that long. And we launched that International Committee for Accessible Document Design, ultimately created what's called a document type definition, or a DTD, for defining how to convert a print document electronically, how to mark it up and code it and now put it to get this not just Braille, but large text and voice-ready files, documentation.

Kelvin Crosby: 9:52

What's amazing is like you hear these stories of, like, the growth of Braille and then coming into the digital industry, because what you're talking about is truly how this transformed the visual impaired world and being able to get access, but it not only did it create access for visually impaired people, but also created access for a lot of other people, and this is the beginning of that process. And I feel like this is the bottom of the Mount Everest, that we are almost to the peak and how truly, like the way you explained it, it's like wow, we definitely made some hurdles. So what was that turning point where you're like we did this, like we have been able to make it digital for people who are visually impaired to be able to access, for a large print and audio files?

Mike Paciello: 10:49

Yeah, that's a great question, Kelvin, exactly when I mean it led to us. We, that working group, worked for a good two to three years to get that specification right, doing a lot of user testing with users. You made made a great point. It's not just for the blind, not just for the low vision. You know, when you think about people who are quote unquote print impaired and includes any individual, say, for example, they may be missing hands and fingers, they can't turn pages.

Mike Paciello: 11:15

It affected the lives of individuals with certain cognition disabilities too, right around Braille. So they may not be, they may not be using Braille, but they may be using large text or they might be even using voice ready. This is before Dragon. I would say it was in the early 90s I think around 92, 93, when we had a specification that we got released. It got adopted by the American Association of Publishers and became their DTD for producing accessible documentation by all of the standards committees that involved it. It also, if you don't know, this, was the predecessor for making the web accessible through the HTML specification.

Mike Paciello: 11:58

We merged the reference spec of the iCAD DT D into the html 3.0 specification. That's how all that, that's how that all all came about.

Chris Maher: 12:10

And mike at what point did all of this trigger you on your own entrepreneurial journey to found companies and to build companies and to sell companies? I'd love to get a little bit of insight into that, because you've been a very successful entrepreneur over the course of your career.

Mike Paciello: 12:29

Really moving forward from 83 all the way up to 96, 1996. Actually it was before that. In 1993, I started getting involved at MIT with the Web Consortium. Accessibility is going out of my mind, I'm talking about it and in 1990, 1996, I got laid off. Actually I didn't get laid off. Digital sold my division. I was approached because I was managing basically what was going on at MIT at that particular time around accessibility. I was just kind of leading it I shouldn't say managing, I was just leading it. And they said hey look, do you think we could put a project together? I said absolutely, because the government's going to fund it. In Europe by that time. Now the TIDE initiative said they would be interested in funding it. So Jim Miller, myself, Danya Dadyek we got together. We wrote a business plan for it and then launched the Web Accessibility Initiative at the W3C in 1997. That really led to me going off on my own.

Mike Paciello: 13:34

Two significant events took place. One was one of the fathers of SGML, Yuri Rubinsky. Yuri owned a company out of Toronto called SoftQuad and they made one of the first graphical editors for SGML electronic documentation. But they also made the very first graphical application for making webpages. And so Yuri was very much into accessibility, as were a lot of the folks at MIT at that particular time. Yuri dies in 96.

Mike Paciello: 14:08

I get asked, I have no idea why, I get asked to be the director, executive director, of the foundation built in his name. That was when I wrote the specification, finished it with the Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation and launched it as a member of that. Ultimately, I know this is going kind of fast, Ultimately, the foundation ran out of funding and so I had to go start my own business and all I knew was web accessibility. So the first company I founded was based on a website that I already had up and running but I believe was the very first web accessibility portal called WebAble, which I still to this day have. It's got a whole different second life, but that's what it was. And launching that led to some meetings with a couple of people who reached out to me about starting up a web business. That was my first foray into, or introduction into, the entrepreneurial world of startups at that particular time.

Chris Maher: 15:15

Mike, was that when you founded The Paciello Group, or was there something before?

Mike Paciello: 15:18

No, no, TPG wasn't founded for almost eight or nine years later.

Chris Maher: 15:24

Gotcha.

Kelvin Crosby: 15:25

Mike, this has been fascinating. I mean, I truly am just kind of blown away how you built up your career into the accessibility world and everything like this and then, as you kind of started getting more and more, you realize you know I'm going to need to go start my own company and really make this really digital accessibility really happen. Kind of tell us that journey and what was that like and how did you start the company?

Mike Paciello: 15:54

Yeah. So a couple of things I think really were important. I already had been in the accessibility business for a number of years by this time, you know, 10, 12, 13 years. So I already had a reputation, a resume around the industry. So that that was, that was important. If you're going to, not like it was my intent to build my own brand, but ultimately that's what happens is you build a resume, you build a reputation, you get involved with your industry, you make contributions to that industry and you get a good reputation resume from that. That led to some VCs, to be honest, with you, approaching me and asking me if I'd be interested in, you know, starting up, basically that particular time was, you know, portals were really important, right, really really popular.

Mike Paciello: 16:43

That was at the web bubble, web portal bubble stage and phase back in 90s. You know now we're talking about 98, 99, in 1998, 99. So I got invited through another individual that I had formed a partnership with to go make a presentation to Motorola Ventures down in Boston. And remember this is now, I'm one of, I don't know I had made the cut somehow just through, because I wrote up the proposal of building a business on this. They had it. I'd made the cut down to the final 10. I was blown away by that, to be honest with you. And then they came in and had me come in and make this presentation. So I make the pitch. Functionally it is a pitch to fund the business. How much I need what I've got going in terms of active business that particular time, which was really a bit of consulting, ironically enough, but a lot of it was sponsorship dollars for the portal itself. And I say a lot. We're talking less than $100,000 a year. You know in terms, but that was good enough back in the 90s that worked for me. I keep myself going. Made the presentation, made the pitch in front of this, you know, table all these guys around it, all the investors and private equity folks there. And then I get a call two days later saying we want you to come in, we want to talk about doing an agreement. Right, I was blown away. First time I'd ever done it. I came in.

Mike Paciello: 18:11

Now this is where lesson two comes in. So now I'm sitting down with the head of Motorola Ventures at that particular time, who also was the son of the CEO of Motorola at that particular time as well. Russell was the son of the CEO of Motorola at that particular time as well. He's got this group of lawyers and technologists and accountants and business people, everything all the way across the board, and he came right out and says, Mike, we love your pitch, love the idea, love the whole concept of you know, helping people with disabilities, building awareness that we like what the portal is and, most important, we love your brand.

Mike Paciello: 18:43

That's it. Everything else about your business, your finances, your business partner, your sponsorship, your whole business model, your business plan, it's no good. Which is why we're here. And this is the important point for entrepreneurs and people. We're here to help you. We're gonna surround you, you're the brand, you're the name, but we're gonna surround you with the best of the best in accounting, legal, you know patent people, you know things of that nature, our financial investors, and we're going to show you and teach you how to build a profitable entity. And that was huge. So that was the lesson I learned. The best thing you can do is surround yourself with people who are smarter, brighter, even more entrepreneurial than you are, and that is what I did with those folks right there at Motor World Adventures.

Chris Maher: 19:33

A great insight for entrepreneurs. It's one thing to take capital, but to take capital it also brings value to the table, is where it can really benefit you.

Kelvin Crosby: 19:45

Well, I mean, if you think about we talked about this in the last episode and what that means is like, if you're going to take in VC money, having that team around you, what is that VC money going to really do for you from an investment standpoint? And I think that is huge, huge, huge, huge, and I'm so glad you brought that up, Mike, and really brought that forward.

Chris Maher: 20:09

So, mike, then you go on and you found the Passiello Group and you have a good exit with that after a number of years of running that. And the amazing brand of TPGI lives today and that business has grown and scaled. But your position today, your job today at AudioEye as Chief Accessibility Officer, which is a public company in the digital accessibility space, on a previous episode Kelvin and I talked about an example of where there has been significant investment and there are starting to have exits or outcomes in an area of accessibility, and we talked about digital accessibility. But I'd love for you to dig into the work you're doing at AudioEye and the landscape that's going on there, and your insights would be wonderful.

Mike Paciello: 20:56

I don't want to leave the story of TPG off the table because that is a success and that is what I consider my biggest feather in my cap. I mean, I did launch the Web Accessibility Initiative and everything like that, but the biggest feather in my cap was TPG. And that was again because of the same notion of I surrounded myself. I built a company that was literally grassroots, that was self-funded, based on my own money at that particular time, but I surrounded myself with the best, literally to this day I still believe that, the best experts in the world. So I had the best team surrounding me In order to build that brand that became TPG. And that is the very reason why the investors from Vector and, of course, through the auspices of Vispero, acquired TPG versus Deque or Level Access that particular time, which was a Level Access they were SSB at that particular still that particular time, because TPG's brand was so well known worldwide and we had a quality about the company that I believe still exists today and I think is crucial to any business, and that is people trusted us. Everything that came from us was based on trust marketing and truth and transparency. That's huge. And I'll bring that back to your question in this world that I'm in today where AudioEye exists.

Mike Paciello: 22:25

Chris, in just a second. But I just want to make sure that I give kudos to all the folks at TPG and Vispero and Vector, because my exit was very successful. It was a forced exit, but not forced because of business. It was my wife. My first wife was dying of brain cancer and I had to stop so I could stay home and take care of her. That was the only reason why I sold it, otherwise I would never. I would not have done that.

Chris Maher: 22:50

Mike thank you for sharing that. We appreciate it. .

Mike Paciello: 22:53

So I mean, I think that was that was important. So now I've I've kind of gone into semi-retirement at about 2016. I sold the company 2017, but I kind of went into semi-retirement until last year, until 2020. What year is it? 2024, yeah. And I was actually being approached in 2023 because I was doing a lot of work with the overlay companies, the AccessiBes of the world, the UserWays, and then AudioEye, and I was doing that as an adjunct with the National Federation for the Blind. And we were just trying to get everybody to get on the same page, get everybody together. There was a lot of contention that was going on and, long story short, the offer that I got that was made to me by AudioEye gave me the opportunity to do what I think needed to be done, and that is get into a business where AI, automation and scale were key components of the company. The fact that AudioEye was public and, you know, and had the reputation that it had, at least in terms of the public and at least in terms of, you know, the stock market and the market and the business market, and David Mirati, who is the CEO and himself a serial entrepreneur, was very successful, has been very successful, was intriguing to me. It wasn't the main reason why I went, but it was very intriguing to me. It gave me a reason for getting back into the workspace. But those were from a business perspective. Those are the big pieces.

Mike Paciello: 24:26

I really believe that our world of accessibility and enhancing software and web, regardless of what platform that it lies on, and making it usable and accessible to people with disabilities, we're doing a great job through the TPGs of the world, but we can't scale, we cannot keep up with it. It's just, and I don't know that we ever will unless we start to automate as much as we possibly can, still keeping our eyes on it, like any good accessibility company would, watching what's being done through the automation, having it QA checked, have it user tested. But I really do think that the only way we're going to be able to keep up with mainstream industry, which we're in a digital economy, everything we do is web-oriented, right? It's internet-hosted in one form or another.

Mike Paciello: 25:26

You're just talking about billions, if not approaching trillions, of businesses now, whose whole business is built on that, whether it's government services, whether it's banking, whether it's travel, whatever education, whatever industry, whatever vertical market you want to call out everybody's in the digital economy. And if that stuff isn't usable and accessible to people with disabilities, what good is it to them? How are they going to use it? What are we going to do when the curb cuts that we naturally see on the streets are no longer there pretty much because everybody's living in their homes?

Chris Maher: 25:57

My guess is that you feel that the part of the market that you're in today has a very long runway. There's immense opportunity, but we also need to continue to invest, right.

Mike Paciello: 26:10

Absolutely, absolutely.

Mike Paciello: 26:13

David and his partners and our investments in AudioEye, that obviously we're publicly traded, so that's a huge piece of it. You've seen a lot of the money that's gone into Evinced, into Level Access, AudioEye. I mean not AudioEye I mean AccessiBe. They have their, their own, their own means. UserWay got got acquired by M&A with Level Access, and I believe Deque has has their own funding resources. I know a lot of it is private through Preeti's, through Preeti's family, but yeah, you got to have investment. We're never going to be able to move forward, we're not going to be able to take the emerging technologies that are there, work with them and enhance them for accessibility without further investment.

Kelvin Crosby: 26:55

This is something that is very important. As we say it, we're not waiting for change, we're investing in change, and that is truly why it's so important for the podcast and for Samaritan Partners and others to really show that this growth is going to boom. It cannot boom, it cannot, it cannot boom. I mean, it's just there for the grabbings and there for providing the resources. And I think we're in a time and this is why I keep saying we're at the top, almost at the top of Mount Everest.

Kelvin Crosby: 27:38

The question is how are we going to come down? Are we going to come down flat and just fall off the mountain? Are we going to actually work the and just really just fall off the mountain? Are we going to actually work the way down and make the change and really embrace this process? Because in the world, in this whole world, especially the digital side, we're really making leaps and bounds because of AI, because of creating these new opportunities and so forth. But, Mike, what you're seeing and what I'm saying, like would you agree or disagree, or how would you kind of evaluate what I'm saying?

Mike Paciello: 28:17

Well, your version of the bottom of the mountain and my version are different. How's that?

Kelvin Crosby: 28:23

All right.

Mike Paciello: 28:24

I think where we're headed is to a point in time where we won't call it accessibility anymore. It won't be a specialization, it will be built into the very fiber of whatever interface, you know, whatever platform we're all we're all using, and AI certainly will be a key component to that, I believe, or at least a key contributor to it. I'm not even sure it's the, I don't believe that it is the panacea of solutions, but I believe it is a great help, it's a great tool for enhancing even accessibility. So I think the bottom of the mountain looks more like what I used to call years ago and more recently I've been talking about invisible accessibility. It's there, it's built into the interface.

Mike Paciello: 29:12

And not only that, it's pervasive, and I know this will probably get some folks maybe a little bit disturbed, especially those with disabilities, because it comes off Jacob Nielsen- like, if you know, some of the things that he's been writing about around self-adapting interfaces, where AI will be a big part of that and generative AI will be a contributor to that. But I do believe that we will push to a time where the interface, the web, the software, the computer interface, will adapt to the user, rather than users having to use adaptive and assistive technology. That to me is the panacea next to everyone no more blind people, no more deaf people, no more people in wheelchairs, because the medical field, the health field has reached, you know, a panacea in and of itself.

Chris Maher: 30:04

Well, It's a wonderful vision. I hope you're right, and it sounds like Mike, as we wrap up here and before we say goodbye, you know we've had a couple of guests on the show that have talked about disability-driven innovation, inclusive or universal design. It sounds like what you're talking about is a little bit more than that.

Mike Paciello: 30:30

Yeah well, it is inclusive and it's universal in the fact that you should be able to go anywhere, anytime, any place, and use whatever interface you're using and it adapts to the user. So in that sense that's, that's pervasively inclusive. But it shouldn't matter on the persona type or the user type. The fact that I'm a user without a disability will have no more meaning in terms of features of functionality than a person who is blind or deaf, because the interface will do all that self-adapting, and I really truly believe that that exists, that that possibility exists. I've already seen it in remnants of other research to push it

Chris Maher: 31:12

Getting back to kind of the investment side.

Chris Maher: 31:15

I think we're relatively early in the curve of that and I think that the investment that comes in now is going to take advantage of developing that type of world and I think not only will the social impact be at significant scale but also the economic returns can be significant as well.

Mike Paciello: 31:33

Absolutely, absolutely. I totally agree.

Chris Maher: 31:36

So, Mike, before we let you go, how can people learn more about you, your work, your company? Please share where they can find more information about that.

Mike Paciello: 31:46

Yeah, sure, so I've got, you know, a second life, got two lives going on here, so I've got my AudioEye life. So you can contact me at AudioEye. I'm on LinkedIn, all the social networks. Just look up Mike Paciello, you'll find me. My email is michael. paciello@ audioeye. com. Feel free to ping me anyway there. And AudioE ye is, you know, pretty pervasive in terms of the web anyway. If you want to contact me privately, I have WebAble. It's up and running. It's a whole different kind of business. It's basically an AI-generated news aggregate for accessibility and disability news. That's what I do there and my email address is mpaciello@ webable. com. Or, again, you could just look me up on LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, X, all of the social networks, just look up Mike Paciello and find me there.

Kelvin Crosby: 32:36

So we want to know are you on TikTok?

Mike Paciello: 32:38

I'm not on TikTok,

Kelvin Crosby: 32:41

I'm visualizing you dancing.

Chris Maher: 32:48

No, no, no don't.

Mike Paciello: 32:48

No, don't, because that's the only thing I don't do.

Chris Maher: 32:50

Well, thank you, Mike. You're the best my friend. Thank you for spending some time with us and we hope to see you soon

Mike Paciello: 32:57

It's been great being with you and Kelvin. I appreciate the time.

Kelvin Crosby: 33:02

Alright, that wraps up Investing in Accessibility and, as I always say, go live beyond your challenges and we'll see you in two weeks.

Kelvin Crosby: 33:14

Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@samaritanpartners. com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www. samaritanpartners. com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know, so we can spread the word, so that we can give access to all, by Investing in Accessibility.