Founders Who Lead with Inclusion: Insights from Accessible Startups

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VOICEOVER: Founders Who Lead With Inclusion: Insights From Accessible Startups. Speakers: Mario Soave, Founder and CEO, CleverFi. Patrick Burton, Co-Founder, ViddyScribe. Moderator: Anat Nulman, Founder, assistive.consulting.

ANAT NULMAN: Welcome, everyone. My name is Anat Nulman, and I’m the founder of assistive.consulting. I have been in industry for the 12 years, and I help companies bring their innovative technology to markets, focusing specifically on companies building solutions for people who are visually impaired.

I’m excited to dive into conversation about universal design, and why designing with people and for people leads to better products for everybody. Universal design isn’t an accessibility add-on, uh, that you just slap at the end of your project. It is something that you include from the beginning. It is the mindset from start. When you build with diverse users in mind, you uncover solutions that are simpler, more intuitive, and more usable for all of us. Today, we’ll explore how this approach drives innovation, expands markets, and creates products that work for real people in real environments.

But before we start, let us introduce, um, our panelists. Mario, would you like to start?

MARIO SOAVE: Sure. Thank you, Anat. My name is Mario Soave, and I’m the founder and CEO of CleverFi. CleverFi is a financial technology platform designed to make personal finance accessible to everyone, particularly people who are blind or have low vision. I’m blind myself, and I founded CleverFi because I was frustrated with how inaccessible most financial tools and apps were. I wanted to create something that would work seamlessly with screen readers and other assistive technologies, but also be intuitive and powerful enough for anyone to use.

ANAT NULMAN: Wonderful. Patrick?

PATRICK BURTON: Hi, everyone. I’m Patrick Burton, co-founder of ViddyScribe. ViddyScribe is a video accessibility platform that automatically generates captions, audio descriptions, and transcripts for video content. We started ViddyScribe because we saw that there was a huge gap in making video content accessible, especially for educational and professional contexts. And we wanted to build a solution that not only made videos accessible but also improved the experience for everyone—whether you’re watching with the sound off on a train, or you’re in a noisy environment, or you just prefer to read along while you listen.

ANAT NULMAN: Excellent. So let’s dive right in. I want to start by talking about the founding story. What made you decide to start your companies? Mario, let’s start with you. What was the moment that made you say, “I need to build this”?

MARIO SOAVE: Well, as I mentioned, I’m blind. And throughout my life, I’ve had to deal with inaccessible technology constantly. But the breaking point for me was when I was trying to manage my personal finances. I wanted to track my spending, set up a budget, monitor my investments—all the things that sighted people can do easily with apps like Mint or Personal Capital. But those apps were completely unusable with VoiceOver, my screen reader.

I would try to navigate through them, and I’d get stuck on unlabeled buttons, or the data would be presented in visual charts that I couldn’t access, or the app would just crash when I tried to use it with accessibility features enabled. It was incredibly frustrating. And I thought, “If I’m having this problem, there must be millions of other people having the same problem.”

So I decided to build CleverFi. I wanted to create a financial platform that was accessible from the ground up, not as an afterthought. And what I discovered in the process is that when you design for accessibility first, you end up creating a better product for everyone. Because the principles of good accessibility—clear navigation, logical information architecture, simple and intuitive interfaces—those are the principles of good design period.

ANAT NULMAN: That’s such an important insight. Patrick, what about you? What led you to start ViddyScribe?

PATRICK BURTON: My story is a bit different because I’m not blind myself, but I have family members who are deaf. And I saw firsthand how much they struggled to access video content, especially educational content. They would want to watch a lecture or a tutorial video, and if it didn’t have captions, they were just out of luck. Or the captions were auto-generated and full of errors, which made them almost useless.

And at the same time, I was working in the education technology space, and I saw how much video content was being created—MOOCs, online courses, training videos, webinars—but very little of it was accessible. And it wasn’t because people didn’t care. It was because making videos accessible was expensive and time-consuming. You had to hire someone to transcribe the video, someone else to create captions, someone else to write audio descriptions. It was just not feasible for most content creators.

So I thought, “There has to be a better way.” And that’s when my co-founder and I started working on ViddyScribe. We wanted to use AI and automation to make video accessibility fast, affordable, and easy. And again, what we found is that accessibility features benefit everyone. Captions help people in noisy environments. Transcripts help people who want to search for specific information in a video. Audio descriptions help people who are listening while they’re driving or exercising. It’s not just about accessibility—it’s about creating a better user experience for all.

ANAT NULMAN: I love that both of you came to this realization that accessibility makes products better for everyone. Let’s talk about that a bit more. Mario, can you give some specific examples of how designing for accessibility improved your product for all users?

MARIO SOAVE: Absolutely. So one of the core principles we follow at CleverFi is that every piece of information should be accessible through multiple modalities. You should be able to access it visually, auditorily, and through text. So for example, when we show your spending over time, we don’t just show a visual graph. We also provide a text summary that says, “You spent $500 on groceries this month, which is 20% more than last month.” And we have audio narration that reads that summary aloud.

Now, originally, we did this for blind users who can’t see the graph. But what we found is that sighted users loved this feature too. Because sometimes you just want to quickly hear a summary instead of having to analyze a graph. Or you want to have the information read to you while you’re driving or cooking. The multi-modal approach made the product more flexible and more useful for everyone.

Another example is our navigation. We designed our app to be fully navigable by keyboard, because many blind users navigate with keyboard shortcuts rather than a mouse. But guess what? Power users love keyboard shortcuts too. It makes them faster and more efficient. So by designing for keyboard accessibility, we created features that appeal to a broader audience.

And I think the biggest example is just overall simplicity. When you design for blind users, you can’t rely on visual cues or complex layouts. You have to make the information architecture clear and logical. And that discipline forces you to think carefully about what information is truly important and how to present it in the most straightforward way. And that benefits all users, because nobody likes cluttered, confusing interfaces.

ANAT NULMAN: Those are excellent examples. Patrick, what about ViddyScribe? How has accessibility thinking shaped your product?

PATRICK BURTON: I think the biggest way is that we’ve always thought about video accessibility not as a separate feature but as an integral part of the video experience. So from the very beginning, we built our platform to generate captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions as part of the standard workflow. It’s not something you have to go back and add later. It’s just part of how videos work on our platform.

And that’s led us to think about video content in a much more holistic way. We think about how people with different abilities and preferences consume content. Some people want to watch. Some people want to listen. Some people want to read. Some people want a combination. And so we’ve built features that allow users to switch between these modes seamlessly.

For example, our interactive transcripts are synced with the video, so you can click on any part of the transcript and jump to that point in the video. This is great for deaf users who rely on the transcript. But it’s also great for anyone who wants to find a specific moment in a long video without having to scrub through the whole thing.

We also use AI to identify key moments in videos—like when a new topic is introduced or when there’s an important visual element. And we use that to generate chapter markers and enhanced audio descriptions. Again, this helps blind users understand what’s happening visually. But it also helps everyone navigate and understand the content better.

And I think one more example is our emphasis on accuracy. Because we knew that captions and transcripts had to be accurate for deaf users who rely on them, we invested heavily in improving our AI models and in having human review processes. And that focus on accuracy has made our product more trustworthy and professional for all users.

ANAT NULMAN: It’s fascinating how accessibility requirements drive innovation. Let’s talk about the business side. There’s this perception that building accessible products is expensive or limits your market. But you both seem to have found the opposite. Mario, can you talk about the business case for accessibility?

MARIO SOAVE: Sure. I think there are a few different angles to the business case. First, there’s the market size. There are over a billion people with disabilities worldwide. That’s a huge potential customer base. And if your product isn’t accessible, you’re essentially excluding a billion people from using it. So from a pure market perspective, accessibility makes sense.

But I think the business case goes beyond just the disability market. Because as we’ve been discussing, accessible products are better products for everyone. And that means you can appeal to a broader market. CleverFi isn’t just for blind people. It’s for anyone who wants a financial app that’s simple, intuitive, and flexible. And by designing it to be accessible, we’ve made it more appealing to a wider audience.

There’s also the regulatory angle. More and more countries are passing laws that require digital products to be accessible. The EU has the European Accessibility Act. The US has the Americans with Disabilities Act. Many other countries have similar laws. And if your product isn’t accessible, you could face legal liability or be shut out of certain markets. So building accessibility in from the start is a way to future-proof your business.

And then I think there’s the talent angle. When you build accessible products, you signal to potential employees—including people with disabilities—that you value inclusion and diversity. And diverse teams build better products. They bring different perspectives and experiences that lead to more innovation and creativity.

ANAT NULMAN: Those are all really strong arguments. Patrick, what would you add to that?

PATRICK BURTON: I completely agree with everything Mario said. I would also add that accessibility can be a competitive advantage. In a lot of markets, accessibility is still rare. Most products are not fully accessible. So if you build a product that is accessible, you can differentiate yourself from the competition.

For ViddyScribe, this has been huge. When we approach educational institutions or companies, one of our main selling points is that we can help them make their content accessible and compliant with regulations like the ADA or Section 508. That’s something that many of our competitors don’t offer, or they offer it as a costly add-on. We offer it as a core part of our platform. And that’s helped us win customers who value accessibility and compliance.

I’d also say that building for accessibility has made us better engineers and product designers. Because accessibility constraints force you to think more carefully about every decision you make. You can’t just throw together a quick solution and call it done. You have to think about how it will work for users with different abilities, different devices, different contexts. And that discipline leads to higher-quality products overall.

ANAT NULMAN: Let’s talk about some of the challenges. Building accessible products isn’t always easy. What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced? Mario?

MARIO SOAVE: I think one of the biggest challenges is just lack of awareness and education. A lot of developers and designers simply don’t know how to build accessible products because they’ve never been taught. Accessibility isn’t typically part of computer science curricula or design school. So you have this situation where well-intentioned people are building inaccessible products just because they don’t know any better.

At CleverFi, we’ve had to invest a lot in training our team on accessibility best practices. We have regular training sessions. We have accessibility guidelines and checklists. We do user testing with people with disabilities. All of that takes time and resources. But it’s necessary if you want to build an accessible product.

Another challenge is testing. Testing for accessibility is more complex than regular testing because you have to test with different assistive technologies—screen readers, screen magnifiers, voice control software, etc. And these technologies are constantly evolving. So you have to stay on top of updates and make sure your product continues to work well with the latest versions.

And then there’s the challenge of balancing accessibility with other product goals. Sometimes there are tensions between making something accessible and making it visually appealing, or making it accessible and making it feature-rich. You have to find the right balance, and that’s not always easy.

ANAT NULMAN: Those are definitely real challenges. Patrick, what about on your end?

PATRICK BURTON: I think one of our biggest challenges has been around AI accuracy. Because we use AI to automatically generate captions and audio descriptions, and AI is not perfect. It makes mistakes, especially with technical terminology, names, accents, background noise, etc. And for accessibility, accuracy really matters. A caption that’s 80% accurate might be frustrating but usable for a hearing person who can fill in the gaps. But for a deaf person who relies entirely on those captions, 80% accuracy is not good enough.

So we’ve had to invest heavily in improving our AI models, in building quality control processes, and in making it easy for users to edit and correct the automatically generated content. That’s been a significant technical and operational challenge.

Another challenge is education and advocacy. Because video accessibility is still not widely understood or prioritized. We often have to educate our customers about why accessibility matters, what the legal requirements are, what the business benefits are. And that can be a slow process. Some organizations get it right away. Others take more convincing.

And then there’s the challenge of scope. Video accessibility is a big domain. There are captions, transcripts, audio descriptions, sign language interpretation, accessible video players, etc. And as a startup, we’ve had to make strategic decisions about what to focus on first and what to build later. We can’t do everything at once, but we want to make sure we’re addressing the most important needs.

ANAT NULMAN: Those are great points. Let’s talk about user involvement. Both of you have emphasized the importance of involving people with disabilities in the development process. Can you talk more about how you do that? Mario, what does user involvement look like at CleverFi?

MARIO SOAVE: User involvement is absolutely central to everything we do. As I mentioned, I’m blind myself, so I’m a user of the product. But I’m just one person with one perspective. So we’ve built a community of users with various disabilities who we work with regularly.

We have a beta testing program where we invite users to try out new features before we release them publicly. We conduct user interviews and usability studies. We have an advisory board made up of people with different disabilities who meet with us quarterly to review our product roadmap and give feedback.

And we make sure to compensate people for their time and expertise. This is important. Too often, companies expect people with disabilities to provide feedback for free. But that’s not fair. If you’re asking someone to spend their time helping improve your product, you should pay them for that work.

We also hire people with disabilities on our team. We have several blind and low vision employees who work as developers, product managers, and customer support representatives. Having people with disabilities on the team ensures that accessibility is always top of mind and that we’re building products that actually work for real users.

ANAT NULMAN: That’s wonderful. Patrick, what about ViddyScribe?

PATRICK BURTON: We take a similar approach. We have a diverse group of users that we work with—people who are deaf, people who are blind, people with cognitive disabilities, people with mobility disabilities. And we engage them throughout the product development process, not just at the end.

For example, when we’re designing a new feature, we start by doing discovery research with users. We ask them about their needs and pain points. We show them rough prototypes and get their feedback. Then we iterate based on that feedback before we build anything. This helps us avoid building features that look good on paper but don’t actually work for real users.

We also do regular accessibility audits where we have experts test our product with various assistive technologies and give us detailed feedback on what’s working and what needs improvement. And we track accessibility issues in our bug tracking system just like any other bugs, and we prioritize fixing them.

And like Mario said, we compensate users for their time. We pay them for participating in research studies, for beta testing, for providing feedback. This is both ethically right and practically important. If you want to get good feedback, you need to respect people’s time and expertise.

ANAT NULMAN: Excellent. So as we start to wrap up, I want to ask you both for advice. If someone in the audience is thinking about starting an accessible tech company, or if they’re at a company that wants to improve accessibility, what advice would you give them? Mario, let’s start with you.

MARIO SOAVE: My biggest piece of advice would be: start with accessibility from day one. Don’t think of it as something you’ll add later. Build it into your foundation from the beginning. Because retrofitting accessibility is much harder and more expensive than building it in from the start.

I’d also say: involve people with disabilities from the beginning. Don’t just guess at what they need. Talk to them. Learn from them. Hire them. Make them part of your team.

And finally, I’d say: think of accessibility as an opportunity, not a constraint. When you embrace accessibility, you open up new markets, you differentiate yourself from competitors, you build better products. It’s not a burden—it’s a competitive advantage.

ANAT NULMAN: Great advice. Patrick?

PATRICK BURTON: I would echo everything Mario said. I’d also add: be humble and be willing to learn. None of us gets accessibility perfect on the first try. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to build things that don’t work as well as you hoped. That’s okay. What matters is that you listen to feedback, you learn from your mistakes, and you keep improving.

I’d also say: leverage the resources that are available. There are so many great guidelines, tools, and communities focused on accessibility. WCAG guidelines, accessibility testing tools, organizations like the National Federation of the Blind or the World Institute on Disability. You don’t have to figure everything out on your own.

And finally, I’d say: advocate for accessibility within your organization and your industry. Talk about why it matters. Share your successes. Help other companies understand the business case and the moral case for accessibility. Because the more companies that embrace accessibility, the better it is for everyone.

ANAT NULMAN: Those are all excellent points. Well, thank you both so much for joining me today and for sharing your experiences and insights. This has been a really enlightening conversation. And thank you to everyone in the audience for your time and attention. I hope this has inspired you to think about how you can incorporate universal design and accessibility into your own work. The future is inclusive, and it’s being built by founders like Mario and Patrick who lead with that vision. Thank you.

MARIO SOAVE: Thank you, Anat.

PATRICK BURTON: Thanks so much.

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