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. Hey, hey, hey, so good to see you even though I can't see you, it's another 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 here's my co-host, Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher: 0:42

I'm good, Kelvin. How are you, my friend? It's good to uh see you and to be with you as always.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:47

Yes. We're starting to get into the holiday season, man. Isn't it crazy we're already here?

Chris Maher: 0:53

It is. It's crazy how quickly that's gone, but I'm looking forward to it getting the family together. Uh yeah, it should be hopefully a wonderful holiday season coming up.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:03

What is one tradition you guys do during Thanksgiving?

Chris Maher: 1:07

Thanksgiving. It's probably similar to what everyone does, but we always go around the table and say what we're thankful for. And Kelvin, this year I'm thankful that you came into my life about a year ago and we've been on this amazing journey together.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:20

We sure have it truly has been a fascinating journey. Who ever thought we would make a friendship.

Chris Maher: 1:30

Well, I knew in that first call when you and I got introduced that you were something special and that you were a kindred spirit and we were going to continue to get to know each other and now it's turned into this wonderful friendship and honestly this whole podcast was your idea and I am so happy that you gave me the nudge to do it. Cause I am having a blast with you.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:37

Well it's truly been a fun podcast. And I am excited as we go into the holiday season. There might be some disruption to the end of the year we'll have to see, we haven't really fleshed out all of the holiday stuff, but we are going to dive into a conference you went to recently.

Chris Maher: 1:37

That's right. So back in September I was invited to participate in a panel at a conference in Indianapolis. What was so cool about this was it wasn't a disability-focused conference but a general market innovation conference. Really big, thousands of attendees, the first morning keynote speaker was Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank. The folks that run this conference, it was really, in my mind, a sign of leadership to include a session on Accessibility Innovation and the startup ecosystem. And a friend of the podcast, Jennison Asuncion, was the moderator and he did an amazing job as always. Super excited to share this with our listeners. So this is gonna be about a 45-minute panel session from the RALLY Innovation Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, back in September.

Kelvin Crosby: 3:12

Awesome. Well, here we go.

Jennison Asuncion: 3:14

Well good morning, everyone. Um thank you for joining us. Well, that's loud. Okay, there we go. Um before I begin, I want to give a special shout out to uh the leadership of the conference, particularly Erica and Troy, for uh thinking what we have to talk about was compelling and interesting uh subject matter for uh the audience of this conference. So thank you very much. Uh we'll begin uh with some uh quick introductions. We'll go down the line here with some introductions uh that will include something that is not on these fine folks LinkedIn profiles. So why don't we start with Molly?

Molly Lazarus: 3:58

Uh my name is Molly Lazarus. I'm the director of the Mark Remarkable US Accelerator, and something that's not on my LinkedIn is I guess I had a baby 10 months ago.

Chris Maher: 4:07

Nice. That's a good one. Uh hi, my name is Chris Maher. I'm the founder and general partner of Samaritan Partners. We're a social impact venture capital fund uh that invests in the disability sector. Um I guess something that's not on my LinkedIn. I am a total girl dad. I've got two daughters, um and my dog is even a girl, and so surrounded by women but loving every minute of it.

Kate Kalcevich: 4:33

Hi everyone, I'm Kate Kalevich. I'm head of accessibility innovation at a company called Fable, uh, which is built on this community of people with disabilities and connecting them to um enterprises. And the thing that you won't find on my LinkedIn profile is that I'm a huge biology nerd. So if anyone wants to talk about the immune system or how cells function, I'd love to.

Michael Bervell: 4:58

Um hey, I'm Michael Bervell. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Test Party. We use AI to rewrite the source code of websites and mobile apps to make them more accessible. Um it's funny, I talked to Molly yesterday, and my first question was, how was childbirth? To which she responded, great.

Molly Lazarus: 5:19

Well, I said great, but pregnancy, that's nine months long.

Michael Bervell: 5:23

Exactly. We might want to change the panel discussion to be about pregnancy, that's nine months long.

Jennison Asuncion: 5:28

Well, let me yeah, let me uh return uh control of this panel here, and uh I'll I'll end by introducing myself. So I'm Jennison Asuncion in my day job I am head of accessibility engineering evangelism at LinkedIn, and I'm also co-founder of the Global Accessibility Awareness Day Foundation. Uh, something that is not on my LinkedIn profile is that I am a huge, huge fan of jazz and stand-up comedy, which are two very different things, but those are two really important things in my life that keep me uh that keep me balanced. Um before we get started, I wanted to set some context, um, just in case our people in this audience who this will be a brand new subject area. So when we're referring to people with disabilities or impairments, first of all, we're talking about over 1.3 billion people around the globe uh who have disabilities or impairments. Um, these include things that you could see, so wheelchair users or folks like myself who are completely blind, and also things that you can't see, non-visible or non-apparent disabilities, such as a chronic health condition or uh learning disability. And and that number is a conservative number, and it's set to grow and is growing due to uh people all of us getting older, uh, as well as the increase in chronic health conditions and such. And also um countries that are starting to embrace and recognize more disabilities or impairments. Uh, that that is still an evolving area, depending on cultural norms and such. Um another definition I'd like to give is around accessibility. So when you ask people, there's thousands of different definitions, but the one I'll settle on here is accessibility are the specifications, the tools, and the best practices, essentially the art and science that make it possible for digital spaces to be used independently by people with disabilities. And when I talk about digital spaces, I'm talking about everything from web and mobile apps to kiosks, gaming, etc. etc. And then finally, uh when we talk about assistive technology or disability tech, uh we're referring to all manner of low-tech and high-tech solutions that bring independence in all manner of uh life activities for people with disabilities. So again, those that those are just things as we go through. If again, if you're new, uh that hopefully will ground you in in what we're talking about. But let's get started. Um we got four interesting folks here. We're gonna talk first of all to two individuals who are deeply involved in the uh assistive or disability tech ecosystem, and then we'll focus on the accessibility aspect of the industry. So, hello Molly.

Molly Lazarus: 8:41

Hello.

Jennison Asuncion: 8:42

Um talk, can you talk to us about the Remarkable uh accelerator and uh how it's positioned within the assistive or disability tech space?

Molly Lazarus: 8:54

Yeah, I think Jennison, you did a really great job kind of laying out the space. So I run the Remarkable Accelerator here in the US. We're one of the longest running disability-focused startup accelerators in the world. We started in Sydney um over 10 years ago, and so we opened up our US arm uh in the last five years. We invest in companies that are building products for people with disabilities. And as Jennison mentioned, you know, that can sound like a niche area, but actually, if you look at the numbers, it's a significantly large portion of the population. Like people with disabilities are a market as large as China, and so like doesn't everybody want to go after a market as large as China? Um, so we tend to invest in companies that are building for people with disabilities, but that can mean a range of things. And so there's the kind of assistive technology, and Jennison, I always think back to a panel we were on like three years ago, where I said if you have universal design, like you design for everyone, curb cuts, things like that. Do you think existive technology doesn't need to exist? And you said, no. And I think that that's right, right? There will always be specific technologies that need to exist for a specific condition, and we're able to support those. But then there are other types of technology that are kind of what I call like cross-the-chasm technologies. So they start off in the disability community because the disability community is one of the best spaces for people who need a technology. Like if you look at like the meta glasses and the different things that are out there that they're trying to make the general population like, and you're kind of like, oh, that's kind of weird. You kind of need to look at a population that has a headache and needs to take Advil. And so there are a lot of technologies we work with that actually will probably make their way into general consumer technologies, but they start building for disability because that is where it has the largest problem. Um so we kind of look at those two areas through our accelerator, but there are many people on this panel who continue to tell you that actually the market is so large that everybody should be thinking about building for disability. Um that's not necessarily where we focus, but thankfully there are other people here who do.

Jennison Asuncion: 11:20

Uh before I get to Chris, I should also mention that uh disability is a continuum. So you've got uh permanent people with permanent disabilities, like mine, I'm completely blind, but then you also have the full range of people uh who have a temporary disability. You break your arm. Um or situational disability. You're in a loud room, but thank goodness you have captions so that you can uh still uh know what people are saying on those TVs and bars, or if you're taking a training course uh at your desk and there's a lot of people talking. So just forgot to mention that in the beginning, but uh there you go.

Molly Lazarus: 11:57

And Jennison, I just that captions point, I think, is exactly the point, right? Captions started as an accessibility need, and now every Gen Z person only watches TikTok with captions. Like they can't engage with the medium otherwise. And so it's just uh it's a good example of how that helps everyone.

Jennison Asuncion: 12:14

And and another one is I mean, when you think about uh the ability to uh make a font larger, you know, people will just do it because it's more comfortable. They don't necessarily think that they might have a quote-unquote disability, it's just easier uh for someone to enlarge the font as they need it. Chris, uh from a venture capital perspective, what makes a disability-focused startup something that's uh that's attractive to an investor?

Chris Maher: 12:46

So I guess taking a step back and looking at just the size of the market, and I'm gonna kind of summarize some of the statistics that you two already talked about. It is a massive market, right? And so the choice to focus on investing in the disability sector was partly, I'm an operator. I launched the fund two years ago, but prior to that I spent 25 years as an operator. And in parallel to that, my wife and I have raised two wonderful daughters, both of whom have disabilities. So I've got the lived experience of raising two children with disability, and the market is massive. And so just to kind of uh summarize some of the statistics that bring that to life, globally it's the largest minority population on the planet, the disability community, plus or minus 1.5 billion people. That will by 2050 will be over three billion people. One in six people globally has a disability, one in four adults in the U.S. Um collectively, the disability community, along with their family and friends who support them, control $13 trillion. Um, and the assistive tech and disability market is predicted or projected to be $50 plus billion dollars by 2035. So like it is a massive opportunity for investment. Um and so that a lot of that is why I chose to focus the fund on that. In terms of what makes a good investment opportunity, um we look through certain lenses, um, and we are an impact-driven VC fund, and so we're not going to invest in companies that have the potential for a great financial return, but don't have potential for a great social return, so we might be a little bit different than a traditional venture fund. Um but for us we look at it through three lenses. Um, and it starts off with what's the problem they're solving. One of the wonderful things about entrepreneurs in the disability sector is that typically they have a very personal connection to the problems they are solving. Either they themselves or someone close to them have the lived experience. So they're they're kind of starting off with product market fit. Now, whether that's venture investable or not is kind of up to you know uh investors like myself to figure it out. But we look at the problem they're solving to start and what their opportunity is to do that at scale and in a sustainable way. That's the first thing we look at. If we can check that box, then we look at actually the founders and the team behind the business. Because at that early stage of entrepreneurship, that is a critical ingredient to its future success. And that's not just in the disability um uh sector. I think that is entrepreneurship in general, because I've been in that role. And then after if we can check that box, then we really dig into the commercial opportunity. Um do they have product market fit? What's their go-to market? Is it B2B, B2B to C, is it recurring revenue, et cetera? Um, and then what's their their potential to do that at scale? There's a whole other conversation around the business models that we invest in, which largely comes from my background of being an entrepreneur, but we'll hold that off for another question.

Jennison Asuncion: 15:46

Uh question to for both uh you, Chris, and for Molly. Maybe we'll start with Molly on this one. What are some of the common areas that you found that you find founders in this space struggle with? And what is it that helps you support and understand what can make them uh successful?

Molly Lazarus: 16:06

Yeah, so I think it's there are the standard things that are fairly typical of entrepreneurs that we're seeing, and I can get to those, but I think every industry requires you to be a good messenger of the work that you do. And I think traditionally disability has been lumped in with charity. And I think that that's a really problematic narrative because it it misses the assumption that actually this is a huge market. And so most of the companies we work with, you know, Chris will be potentially early capital in them. We invest capital, but most of them actually need to get capital from other industries, like whether it's health tech or hardware-focused startups. And I think that it's it's really kind of a building a disability company is almost like forcing yourself to be like an evangelical preacher or something. Like you have to like run around and be like, believe me, like I'll show you if you just help me. And it's interesting because I looked through all the companies that are in the pitch finals for this the for the rally conference, and every single one of them has a potential disability lens. And some actually the messaging would be so much more powerful if they did. There's a hard tech company that drops in emergency services or emergency goods into places that are affected by climate. And like people with disabilities are four times more likely to die in a climate disaster. Like, that is a huge, huge thing that could make a massive difference and have huge economic impact for communities that can actually be able to serve folks. And so I think that sometimes it can feel lonely to be a founder in this space because you're like, I'm trying to tell you something that is so true. Like, you know, baby boomers are aging, they spend $550 million a year, billion dollars a year, like billion? B. Billion. Um a lot of them won't call themselves disabled, but they are all looking for assistive technologies because it gets harder to get around and you don't want to stay at home. And so I think that the messaging is something that we work on with them a lot, and I am so glad that we are here because it allows us to tell you all the messaging, and hopefully they don't have to be the you know canary in the coal mine all the time being like this is important.

Chris Maher: 18:40

Yeah, I agree with all I think storytelling is critically important, and I think part of that storytelling to move it away from oh, this is serving people with disabilities, why is this not a nonprofit? You have to talk about at the end of the day, you gotta talk about how you're gonna make money and how you're gonna deliver value to your customers, like how you're gonna improve their bottom line. Um so really moving from doing something that's feel good or checking a compliance box to driving value. Um and then I think as they start to scale, listen, the entrepreneurial journey is really hard. And I think for a first-time solo founder uh CEO, it can be a very lonely journey. It's a lot of ups and downs. Um you just you need to manage those emotions of that journey, which can be very challenging. A lot of times I like it when there's co-founders so they can work with each other and help each other. And then as you start to scale, um that is a whole other animal to deal with in terms of building out your uh human capital, your infrastructure, your processes. Many times that founder CEO becomes the bottleneck as you start to scale. Um and so helping them through, they all need operational assistance, but I think um many startups run into trouble when they start to scale and and uh just aren't able to figure that out.

Molly Lazarus: 19:54

I would just echo that. I think one of the things that we do in our accelerator that's different is um you get executive coaching throughout the entire thing, but you do it as a co-founding team. And honestly, it is it's I think every startup needs to do it because people, you have like three things as a founder. You have people, you have your time, you have your equity. And you're kind of playing with those all the time to make them work. And so providing that resilience and that support so that when it gets hard, when entrepreneurship gets hard, you have a really strong way to fall back and have meaningful decision conversations with your team, I think is like an immeasurable thing that every entrepreneur needs to invest in.

Jennison Asuncion: 20:44

Anything else on your end, Chris?

Chris Maher: 20:46

No, I think that's it.

Jennison Asuncion: 20:47

All right. Well, thank you both. Um we're gonna now uh go over and talk a little bit about accessibility and to two folks who are working uh with all manner of companies uh who have made it an intentional requirement uh to make uh accessibility uh part of their design and development of digital spaces. So good morning, Kate. Maybe if you could start by telling us how does uh Fable uh support companies who are who have made accessibility a priority in the design and development of their digital spaces?

Kate Kalcevich: 21:27

Yeah, good morning. And and before I get into that, I'd like to say I am one of those people with an invisible disability. I wear hearing aids and both of my ears they are really tiny. Um, and I rely on captions and lip reading when there are no captions. So you'll you'll find me like really watching people's faces because I'm just trying to figure out what they're saying. Um so Fable is a company that's founded on this very innovative principle that if you work directly with people with disabilities in your product development lifecycle, you build products that are more robust, they're compliant with accessibility laws, and you just capture this market share that you wouldn't capture otherwise by not building accessible products. So it's very different than a lot of the companies that focus more on the technology side of accessibility. We're really focused on that human side, but using technology to scale access to the human side of things. So companies work with us if they're interested in, say, you know, having an inclusive brand. So they want to be known as an accessible, uh, a supporter of accessibility and as a company that's welcoming of customers with disabilities. There are also companies who are more interested in risk mitigation. So in the US, I think we're on track for maybe 5,000 accessibility lawsuits by the end of this year based on the pacing that it's going. So that's a really big concern for some companies. And so we help them with understanding where that risk comes from and what you can do to avoid that risk. Um, and then we also work with companies who just want to innovate. People with disabilities are some of the most creative problem solvers in the world. Like we don't have a choice, the world isn't built for us. We, you know, we want to work, we want to shop, we want to get an education. Sometimes you just got to figure it out on your own, and we're really good at doing that. And so companies can tap into this engine of innovation, and so they'll do things like generative conversations where they're really trying to understand, you know, what are the needs of this community of people, and how can we use that to build better product, to build new product, to build new service offerings. So we invest in helping connect companies to that community for those reasons. And sometimes that can look like something as simple as just doing user research on your product in the development lifecycle. And sometimes it's that more complex forward-thinking, innovation, and sometimes it's just compliance with accessibility laws. So um, if you want to do business in Europe nowadays, there's the European Accessibility Act. If you're gonna sell products or goods in Europe, you have to be compliant. And Europe is really good at enforcement of legislation, so that's got a lot of companies really thinking, you know, this is something they have to invest in.

Jennison Asuncion: 24:16

Thanks, Kate. Michael, um, can you tell us a little bit about Test Party and similar to Kate, how does your solution help companies that are making accessibility and usability uh kind of uh central to design development of digital spaces?

Michael Bervell: 24:35

Yeah, I mean this panel is all about how do you design for accessibility from day one. And really, I'm thinking a lot about how do you design from day zero, even before you have someone thinking about uh what accessibility looks like in a certain product. And so what I love about companies like Fable and what Kate works on is it helps you to pull into your QA process, to pull into your ideation process, people with disabilities to evaluate your products. Our question is what can you do with automation? What can you do on the non-human side that pairs with a lot of this human work so that you can ensure that even at a baseline, you're achieving some sort of base level of compliance? Um I know we've talked a lot about what disabilities and accessibility is. I'm curious out of the in the audience, by show of hands, like who would say that either they have a disability or they have an immediate family member with a disability? Yeah, for context, it's like close to half the room, right? Um which is it's invisible. On our team, 75% of our of our employees either have a disability or have a family member with a disability. And I think what's nice about that for us is it's it's created this culture at our company where people have a passion for the work that they do. And our customers, when I'm traveling and and meeting, you know, different executives, some of whom have been hit with some of these lawsuits that Kate just mentioned, like they take it as a personal offense because they have a personal connection to disability and accessibility. But they don't know how to design for accessibility, or they don't even know that there's a set of standards like the web content accessibility guidelines, that you can look at this rule book and this guidebook, and it'll kind of teach you how to do that. So, really, our solution is to give people that baseline. Can we create AI tools, AI agents, prompts, um specifically tuned large language models around accessibility standards that can always be on in your code base and flag things and fix things for you? Um I remember when we first pitched this idea like two and a half years ago, it seemed kind of like you know, code rewriting was not a thing, like um, you know, Cursor was was just starting up. Uh really the the closest industry to us that we looked at as an example was the security industry. Companies like Sneak and Cernarcube and AcuNetics, which had turned on kind of always on security and made that the industry standard. Um I think the vision, not just for our company, but for others that are doing AI and accessibility, I would say there's maybe two or three other than us. Um that's our focus. So I guess the the call for people in the audience is like there's a lot of like green space here. Like in any other industry, if you heard 1.6 billion users, 500 billion in spending power, you heard you heard 5,000 lawsuits a year of people needing to change their business to comply with regulation, like you would be sprinting to build that startup. And for some reason, we have three competitors. Like, to me, I mean, I'm happy with that because you know it's great. But realistically, that's, I think that's what's interesting. And Molly brought it up, like, people think of accessibility as charity, and it's sometimes people say, well, the business case is, you know, I've never seen someone with a disability use my website. Well, yeah, because your website's super inaccessible. How are they going to? And so it's really interesting, and and you know, being in this industry now for two and a half years, um, you know, I had done consulting at Google and accessibility and at the UN in accessibility, but it wasn't until I started working full-time that I realized just uh how much opportunity there was. But that's kind of an answer to your question, Jennison, and then a bunch of other random stuff. Hopefully that's good.

Jennison Asuncion: 28:05

No, that's perfect. Uh Kate, uh, how do tech-based solutions like like Michael's at Test Party complement uh your Fable's human-led solution?

Kate Kalcevich: 28:18

I think um in order to do accessibility well, companies need to have more than one tool in their toolbox. And so when we think about technology, technology gets us this wide reach. We're able to do a lot of things quickly, cover a lot of ground. So you're able to look at a website or an app and know what are some of those things that just aren't working by just evaluating the code. And that's really that can be really easy to do with technology and hard to do with humans. What humans do is they give you these really deep insights that the technology can't. So folks can make what by the books, if you're like following the guidance on how to make an accessible product, it seems completely accessible on paper, and then somebody uh you know who's blind or low of vision or hard of hearing tries to use the product, and they're like, Well, but I can't actually buy anything here. I got stuck in the checkout process and I can't complete my purchase. And you know, you'll miss that if you're just using the technology, but on the same side, if you're just trying to use humans all the time for everything, it becomes unscalable. So they're really complementary solutions where you can find some basic accessibility issues at a very wide reach across not just one, but like many products, and you know, work that into your product development cycle so your engineers are getting help very early on in fixing these issues before they ever make it into production. And then you have maybe your design or your research team connecting directly with people with disabilities to get their perspective, their insights on how we should design this thing, how should we build this thing, is this gonna work for you, is this gonna make it delightful for you. And the things that we learn from those human insights, they tend to expand to a lot more than just people with disabilities. So we know, especially with Gen Z, a lot more people are identifying as neurodivergent. So I don't know if that's because diagnoses are getting better or there's less bias against disabilities. So, you know, all the things you do for somebody who might have a cognitive disability has this huge reach into the younger generation. Um, and then the older generation as well, all those seniors who maybe are in the early stages where their memory is not great or they're starting to face cognitive decline. So all of those things you learn apply to them as well. And then you've got this middle of everyone who's working their butts off and is so busy, and they want everything easy and simple too. So we take those human insights and we just expand those in the product and we make products that just work for everybody.

Jennison Asuncion: 31:00

I'll just make a comment also that that um, you know, those those folks who are, those of us who are aging now have this expectation about technology and what's available. And so I personally predict that, you know, as the years go on and more and more people age, they're still gonna demand access to the same technology they were used to when they didn't have a disability. Um so that's just gonna make our area that much more uh valuable and interesting um and put more demands on it. Um a question for you, Michael, and and if others want to chime in on this one as well. We'll start with Michael. Um as a tech founder, what is it about this, some may argue, very niche space? Um got you interested in in spending time in it?

Michael Bervell: 31:58

Well, I'll start by saying I don't think the space is that niche. And I say that because like one of the arguments that we make to our customers, we work now with like close to 36 e-commerce brands. Some are super small, and some you probably have heard of, like Magic Spoon, the Cereal Company, Levain Bakery, Durai Home, um Tatcha, Unilever's brand, those sorts of stuff are all our customers of ours. Um and when we work with these customers, one thing that that we argue is if you make your website more accessible, it also becomes more searchable on search tools like Google and Bing, but also more searchable on GEO tools, which is like generative engine optimization. All right, how do you ensure that an LLM can find your website? And we do this this thinking internally where we ask the question why is it that you know ChatGPT can better navigate an accessible website versus an inaccessible website? And we often attribute it to what we call headless browsing, right? You know, this a browser is going to be spun up on the background of ChatGPT, that browser has to navigate with a keyboard in a similar way that someone with a physical impairment may only be able to navigate a website with a keyboard. And so there are a lot of similarities. And two years ago, when all of this kind of AI stuff was happening, and I had studied computer science and written my senior thesis on GDPR, I saw accessibility as being that next wave, not just for legal compliance, but also for making more deep technical um compliance. I also want to respond to what Kate said about the intersection and importance of both manual um testing and validation and automation. Because I think when I talk to our customers, they always ask the question what is an accessible website? Like what are these accessibility features? And it's things like color contrast, it's things like text size, it's things like are the headings properly labeled? It's things like alternative text on images. Um and those things can be automatically tested for. And then there's things that that even today, even as big of an AI accessibility guy as I am, that have to be manually tested. Things like can you navigate a website with a keyboard? What's the general experience and usability of a site? Um, you know, can you navigate a site with a screen reader? Uh which is which is the way that people who might be blind or low vision will navigate a website. Or what does it look like at 400, 500% zoom on a mobile website? And sometimes I'll I'll test our customers' sites and you zoom into 400%, and that top banner takes up 75% of the screen, and it's impossible to navigate. It would pass you know all of the automated checks, but when you actually do a manual check, it's it's virtually impossible. Right? And so that's how we how we came into the industry. I think where I see accessibility going in the future, especially as people start browsing less and relying on the AI agents and these sorts of tools, um, these tools need to navigate the internet in some way as well. And our big bet is that making websites more accessible will have some positive effects on on that sort of browsing and navigation as well.

Chris Maher: 34:54

Jennison, can I chime in here? This is Chris here. So an example of an industry. So ultimately, if you're a company, you want to have access to the greatest number of customers possible, right? That's just good business. And so an industry that is leaning into accessibility, which I think is a very good example, is travel. And so we've invested in an accessible travel company called Wheel the World. Um, but the travel industry has come to the realization um that people with disabilities like to travel just as much as people without disabilities. And when they travel, they tend to travel with their friend friends, their family, and their caregivers. And if you can't accommodate the one person in the group that has a disability, the whole group's going somewhere else. So whether that's your hotel, your venue, your park, uh your restaurant. And so the travel industry has started to lean into accessibility quite a bit because the stats I gave you earlier, or several of us gave you, is if one in four adults, one in six people has a disability, that's what, 15 to 20 percent of like your potential customer base. But when you now include their family and friends and caregivers, that jumps to like 60 plus percent. And so the reality of excluding 60 percent plus of the market opportunity for yourself is just bad business. And so that's just one of many examples of an industry that's leaning into accessibility, not only because it's the right thing to do, but it's also really good for business.

Molly Lazarus: 36:27

I think it's an interesting point on travel because a lot of times when we think about accessibility, we think about either compliance or website or can I can I work, can they do these things? But leisure is really important. And I think your point around like the people who are traveling together, but also like who has all the money and free time right now, right? It's people who are retired. And like they want to spend, they want to travel, they want to do things, and on average they are acquiring disabilities. And so why why would you give up on the population that has the most money and the most ability to spend it on the road?

Jennison Asuncion: 37:06

That's great. Um before I open it to questions, uh I'll just see if anyone has any else, anyone else has any final words? Anything else they want to cover? We good?

Chris Maher: 37:19

I guess. Michael, you want to go? I guess I guess for me, I think that with the the advent of things like AI and technology, like assistive technology services, AI, we're all seeing it in real time on a daily basis, the profoundly positive impact it is having in the lives of people with disabilities. Um but many of those solutions that are being developed are the new curb cut effects or captioning effects that are that are gonna have value to the broader population. And so I do think we're at a moment in time where we have, I think, the greatest opportunity if we work together and collaborate to create a world going forward that it's not better for just some of us, but better for all of us.

Molly Lazarus: 38:08

Can I caveat that?

Chris Maher: 38:09

Please.

Molly Lazarus: 38:10

Um speaking of AI, I just need to point out that it was built on an accessible inaccessible internet. So just bringing AI into it isn't gonna solve the problem, but intentionally saying we can do better, I think, is the path forward.

Kate Kalcevich: 38:27

I'm gonna jump on the AI bandwagon if I might, and just say like there's there is a lot of risk with AI and AI being able to amplify biases. Um we see a lot of that in like hiring processes where people with disabilities are typically either unemployed or underemployed, but then there's this great benefit. Like AI has benefited me personally so much in the last few years, um, just through these automated captions in meetings. So everyone's shifting to online meetings and every meeting having transcripts, and I've got this ability to participate in meetings at work in a way that I've never had before. So there's a lot of benefits and risk all packaged together, and we just need to extract the benefits and uh mitigate the risk, and you know, life will be good.

Jennison Asuncion: 39:17

Michael, any?

Michael Bervell: 39:18

uh I'm excited for the open QA.

Jennison Asuncion: 39:22

Uh Michael, your uh your website for test party?

Michael Bervell: 39:26

Oh yeah. Testparty.ai.

Jennison Asuncion: 39:28

And Kate for Fable?

Kate Kalcevich: 39:29

Makeitfable.com.

Jennison Asuncion: 39:31

Thank you. And Chris, where can people find uh information about you and your

Chris Maher: 39:35

you can find me on LinkedIn or just go to SamaritanPartners.com.

Jennison Asuncion: 39:38

Great and Molly?

Molly Lazarus: 39:39

We are at remarkable.org.

Jennison Asuncion: 39:42

Thank you. All right, let's open it up to some questions. I don't know if we've got like a roving mic down there or if people will just stand up and we'll repeat the question.

Chris Maher: 39:52

Do you do we have a roving mic?

Jennison Asuncion: 39:54

Okay, thank you very much.

Chris Maher: 39:56

Thank you, Mike.

Jennison Asuncion: 40:01

And if you could just uh start with your first name and who you have the question addressed to.

Question #1: 40:06

Yeah, my name is Logan. I run the Indiana Center for Emerging Technologies. We actually have a program called Accessible Innovation that focuses on disability tech. Um so I work with about 20 innovators across the state. Are there is there one particular area that you would like to see innovators focus more on or really put a focus on? I've seen so many different innovators not talk to people that have these lived experiences and they're trying to drop a solution in and it's being repeated over and over. But is there anything in particular that you see that really stands out? So maybe just one by one on that.

Michael Bervell: 40:46

I can start. Um, and I'm not an investor, so I don't see as much as Molly and Chris see. But I will say one thing that that I focus on is the digital space, and I think there's a lot of opportunity and thinking about how we can use technology to augment physical accessibility and physical access. Um I do think that like the next wave of AI, call it in a year or two years, you know, everyone's talking about AGI and LLMs and et cetera, et cetera. But there's a lot of innovation in the robotics space. And I think that the intersection of robotics and accessibility, I haven't yet seen in my peer group of founders people building really cool tools in that space. Potentially, you know, the meta Ray bands are an example of that, but I think it can go a lot further. So maybe that'll be my next act after this one is uh wrapped up.

Kate Kalcevich: 41:32

And just to build on that, I think what Meta did with the Ray Band by building this mainstream product, but then also making sure they incorporate all this accessibility, you know, whether it's for people who are blind or hard of hearing, that idea of you can take a mainstream product and expand it to this other audience, but you've got to work with that audience to make it work for them. And so I think there's this huge opportunity that people sometimes think, oh, I'm just gonna make this thing for the gen population, and they're missing out on that.

Michael Bervell: 42:00

Or even one example is like Waymo. Like Waymo cars are an example I think of of really good self-driving cars that are really like precise in their location techniques, potentially are really good innovations in this space as well.

Chris Maher: 42:13

I think a point that you raise that is critically important is people are building things for any customer, but customers with disabilities specifically, when you don't include those people in the process, right? And so the phrase nothing about us without us, um it's just good design to include the community in that process, right, from the beginning. And there are some wonderful examples of that within disability. So uh yeah, if you're mentoring and advising those companies, tell them to go talk to the actual customers, because the last thing you want to be is a company that has a solution looking for a problem. So that's lack of product market fit, and that is not a good place to be. One quick thing about I think the integration of hardware and software services. So a great example, this is gonna be a totally selfish plug. We're investors in a company called Be My Eyes, it's an app for the blind low vision community. They have a partnership with Meta and the Ray Band glasses, and so their service is integrated into the glasses. So people who are blind low vision actually, for I think the first time have hands-free accessibility, so they can just say, Meta, call Be My Eyes, and then either their AI agent or a human volunteer will see through the glasses and help them navigate what they're um trying to navigate, uh, whether it's a task or a physical environment, et cetera. And so, like, that's a wonderful example of bringing hardware and software together. And Be My Eyes, the community has been involved in the development of their product from day one, um, where it all comes together in a really nice way and delivers value for everybody.

Jennison Asuncion: 43:43

Molly, did you have any thought on this uh on the on Logan's question?

Molly Lazarus: 43:47

I think it was very covered, but uh the only thing that I would say is um you're rarely the first person to ever consider a solution for this technology. And a lot of times people will come to me and be like, I'm the only one doing it. And I'll be like, I have a list of five others. And like, that's great. Competition is is important, but there are so many lessons that you can learn from not being the only one that I think really doing that research to understand what has come before you and what already exists is really important.

Jennison Asuncion: 44:18

I'll just add, like uh most people on this panel were have mentioned the importance of consulting people with disabilities or at least listening and finding out what they need. I mean, there's so many times where I've heard about a piece of technology that sounds interesting, but then when people describe what it looks like, you know, they're a pair of glasses, but to wear them, you almost have these large cameras and things on it. You wouldn't catch me dead walking around wearing something like that or a vibrating coat. I mean I get that might be cool and interesting for a tech geek to say, yeah, let's do that. But then I feel bad because at the end of the day, they've created something that no one's gonna use because those of us with the disabilities or impairments are gonna have to be like accepting of it to use it. So thanks, Logan, for that one. We have time for maybe one more question.

Question #2: 45:19

Hello? Oh, perfect. Uh hi, panel. My name is Phil. Thank you for all the great insight you have shared, um, especially around AI in the accessibility space. Uh AI is it's a great tool, but accessibility and inclusion, it's a mindset. Um organizations can use AI to help accessibility, but it's not going to solve the problem. Um but with AI and it now being able to really advance tech at a rate not seen before, um, and accessibility typically being more of a reactive decision and move by decision makers, how can we change the conversation so that new technologies that get built in the next three to five years, especially because of AI, you know, are built with inclusion in mind when I'm thinking about the AR, VR space? Like that's going to be so big for people globally with disabilities, but inclusion has to be built into the conversation from the beginning. So how do we create that conversation to really empower decision makers to think proactively as compared to reactively?

Jennison Asuncion: 46:19

Kate, can I ask you maybe to

Kate Kalcevich: 46:21

Sure, and maybe I'll have a little bit of a different answer here than I would typically give, but I think we need more people with disability in leadership positions in companies. And I think that's where some of the big gaps are that you know the C-suite or the VPs or you know the heads of these companies traditionally are very homogenous. And we really need to see diversity and leadership in companies to start to see people thinking differently about AI and development. So, and you know, that all just speaks to the tools that we use and how we hire and how we accommodate people with disabilities in the workplace. And I'm really lucky to have had the opportunity to get the accommodations I need to be in a leadership role in Fable. And many others aren't.

Molly Lazarus: 47:07

Um if I could kind of speak to it from the startup space, I think, I understand the reasons that people don't want to build accessibly, limited resources, and like the hustle culture. Hustle culture is ableist. Um and I think that in the assumption that you need to go fast, you cut as many corners as possible. And those corners usually leave a lot of people behind. And so I think as a startup ecosystem, we also need to evaluate how are we talking about what we do, how are we asking our founders to operate? And like, are we actually able to say, you know, take your foot off the gas a little bit because the market down the road will be bigger if you just do it right from the start, instead of just like hacking it and being like, we'll figure out accessibility when somebody sues us, right? Like, you we have to be better as an as investors, as accelerators, as people who fund these startups, at saying you should include everybody because it's good business , and I will wait.

Jennison Asuncion: 48:18

And on that note, we are right at 10:45. So I want to have you all join me in thanking our panel. Thank you so much.

Kelvin Crosby: 48:29

Man, that was incredible. That was truly an awesome panel, Chris.

Chris Maher: 48:35

Yeah, it was super fun, and kind of almost like two panels in one, where at the beginning it was me and Molly talking about the startup ecosystem, and then after that it was Kate and Michael really getting into inclusive design and digital accessibility and the scaling of that. And Jennison as always done an amazing job. We will put links in the show notes to contact those folks on LinkedIn, links to their companies, links to our wonderful friends at Rally Innovation, so you can learn more about the conference as well.

Kelvin Crosby: 49:07

Well that wraps up Investing in Accessibility. As I always say, go live beyond your challenges, and we'll see you in two weeks. 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 @SamaritanPartners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners email Chris at chris@samaritanpartners.com. If you would 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 and so we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.