Founded in 1996, Everway (formerly Texthelp) has grown from a small mission-driven assistive technology company into a global edtech platform. In this keynote, founder Martin McKay shares the business decisions that shaped that growth. From establishing itself in the market, to bringing in private investment, to expansion through strategic acquisitions, Martin will reflect on what it takes to grow with intention, the importance of aligning product vision with business strategy, and the journey behind scaling a company while staying true to its purpose.

Martin McKay – Everway

Martin founded Everway (formerly Texthelp) in 1996 with a mission to create technology that empowers everyone to communicate more effectively. What started as a company focused on supporting individuals with speech and dexterity challenges has evolved into a leader in neuroinclusive technology, helping people of all abilities read, write, and express their ideas more fluently. Martin’s vision is to unlock the potential of every mind by developing tools that address the unique needs of individuals. Under his leadership, Everway has impacted over 250 million people worldwide, with a goal of reaching one billion by 2030.

Early‑stage assistive technology startups often struggle to move from ideas to real‑world adoption—not because the technology isn’t strong, but because readiness, market fit, and funding expectations are misaligned. In this session, the IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh shares a practical, three‑phase approach designed to help AT startups validate early, make smarter go‑to‑market decisions, and reduce the risk of premature scaling. The framework integrates customer discovery, stakeholder input, readiness assessment, and mentor‑guided feedback to identify gaps before they become costly setbacks. Founders will learn how to strengthen product‑market alignment, improve positioning for pilots and investment, and build a clearer path from concept to adoption. Attendees leave with an actionable roadmap to advance startup‑stage AT solutions with greater confidence and traction.

Michelle Zorrilla, PhD, MPH – IMPACT Center

Michelle Zorrilla, PhD, MPH, is Associate Director of Technology Translation and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pittsburgh’s IMPACT Center, where she advances assistive and rehabilitation technologies from research to real world use. Her work focuses on bridging research, industry, and entrepreneurship through structured training programs, partnerships, and commercialization support.

The U.S. Congress appropriates millions in federal funds to support research, innovation, and to improve access to assistive technology (AT) in K-12 schools. Participants will learn about the federal education funding landscape and how current policies and practices are impacting access to education and research dollars meant for States and other entities.

Laura Kaloi – Stride Policy Solutions

Laura W. Kaloi is a Partner at Stride Policy Solutions and serves as ATIA’s federal policy advisor. She leads policy strategy and advocacy with the Administration, Congress, and federal agencies to expand access to assistive technology and improve outcomes for children with disabilities. A recognized expert in education and disability policy, Laura has deep experience with federal education and disability authorizing laws and related funding including the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

A walk through of the complete arc of building a fundable, valuable company. This session introduces a lifecycle and KPI framework to help you understand where your company sits today and what you need to prove to unlock the next stage of capital. Learn how valuation is calculated using revenue multiples and EBITDA, and the factors unique to the assistive technology market that influence that number. You’ll also gain a clear view of the investment waterfall — who gets paid, in what order, and why it should shape your funding decisions early. You’ll leave with a practical pitch deck framework built around the three things every investor needs to hear, with examples grounded in the AT and special needs market.

Kevin Custer – Arc Capital Development

Co-founder ARC Capital, 30 yrs in PreK-12 education & disability markets. Launched 6 startups, most reaching $20M in revenue within 3 years. Two went public and three were acquired. He has advised 150+ companies, invested $18M in 50+ deals, and achieved 25+ exits. He led 2 Canadian firms from $100k to eight-figure in revenues each, in under two years, one went public, one acquired by US private equity. His ventures have generated $250M+, supporting 10M+ people and 1M+ people with disabilities.

Strong partnerships are essential to scaling assistive technology and sustaining impact. This session explores how AT companies, public education leaders, workforce partners, and community organizations can build strategic public-private partnerships that align funding around shared goals for accessibility, inclusion, and measurable outcomes. Participants will learn practical strategies to coordinate funding sources, strengthen cross-sector collaboration, reduce implementation risk, and support long term sustainability while advancing both public impact and business growth.

Glenna Wright-Gallo – Everway

Glenna Wright-Gallo is a leader in disability policy, inclusive education and employment, and systems improvement. She is Vice President of the Office of Strategic Research and Policy at Everway, where she aligns research, policy, and technology to improve outcomes for students with disabilities and diverse learners. She previously served as Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the U.S. Department of Education, overseeing OSEP and RSA and leading national efforts under IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act to expand access to education, work, assistive technology, and inclusive practices for individuals with disabilities.

Julie Bowers – Nevada Department of Education

Julie Bowers, M.S. in Special Education, serves as the Director of the Office of Comprehensive Student Services at the Nevada Department of Education (NDE), having led as Nevada’s State Director for Special Education for the past five years. With over 37 years of experience spanning classroom, district, and state levels, she drives state efforts to move beyond basic compliance toward systemically improving outcomes for students with disabilities.
Prior to her state leadership, Ms. Bowers served at the district level as an Educational Diagnostician and District Transition Specialist. She also served as Project Director and Principal Investigator for the University of Delaware’s Center for Disabilities Studies (ACCESS Project), delivering professional development on general education curriculum access for students with severe disabilities.

Building an assistive technology company requires more than a great product, it requires navigating the complex realities of fundraising, growth, and scaling impact. This panel is a continuation of the Capital Markets Primer that will bring the topic into a real-world context, featuring founders from pre-seed, seed, and Series A-stage companies as they share their firsthand experiences raising capital and building their businesses.
Through a candid conversation, panelists will discuss how investor expectations evolve across stages, how they have approached valuation and fundraising strategy, and the key decisions and tradeoffs they faced along the way. They will also explore the challenge of balancing mission-driven impact with the demands of building a scalable, financially sustainable company.

Moderator: Chris Maher – Samaritan Partners

Chris Maher is Founder and General Partner at Samaritan Partners, a public benefit venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies that serve the disability community. Beyond investing, Chris is cultivating a vibrant community of founders, investors, and thought leaders who are shaping disability inclusion and assistive tech innovation. A former CEO, Chris combines operational expertise with a deeply personal mission, informed by his lived experience as a parent and advocate.

Microsoft has long helped define the accessibility agenda—pairing technology innovation with practical best practices that other companies can adopt and scale. In this keynote, Jessica Rafuse will show how that leadership comes to life across the full innovation lifecycle: from building on Azure with the security, compliance, identity, and device compatibility needed for enterprise growth, to applying inclusive design principles that make products more usable from the first interaction onward. She will highlight how Microsoft’s accessibility ecosystem, partner resources, and market experience can help assistive technology companies accelerate innovation, strengthen product quality, and scale with greater confidence.

Jessica Rafuse – Microsoft

Jessica Rafuse is Director of Global Partnerships & Commercial Impact for Accessibility at Microsoft, where she leads strategic initiatives to accelerate accessibility and empower people with disabilities. She works with customers, partners, and community to drive business impact through accessible AI. An attorney by training, she previously advanced accessibility in multinational corporations and served as an Administrative Judge for the U.S. federal government. Jessica has muscular dystrophy and uses a power wheelchair, bringing lived experience to her leadership. She speaks globally on accessibility, AI inclusion, and the business value of disability-led design, championing policies and partnerships that make technology accessible to all.

As AI becomes embedded across the assistive technology product lifecycle—from prototyping and content generation to model training, testing, and AI-assisted coding—the need for responsible development increases. This panel will examine how teams can apply Microsoft’s trusted technology principles to accelerate innovation while maintaining privacy, security, inclusion, and user trust.
Panelists will discuss practical approaches to data governance, personal information protection, and bias mitigation across training data, design decisions, and AI-enabled development practices. The conversation will focus on how developers and product leaders can use AI intentionally—moving faster without compromising accessibility, responsible design, or user needs.

Moderator: Angela Lean – Microsoft

Angela Lean is a Senior Business Program Manager in Microsoft’s Office of Accessibility, where she leads initiatives focused on disability-first AI and expanding the accessibility partner ecosystem. With over 25 years of experience across community advocacy, marketing, and program management, she brings a strategic, human-centered approach to advancing inclusive technology. Angela holds a BA from Yale University and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. A member of the disability community and mother of two young adults, she is based in New York City.

Participants will learn how technology can become a core part of service delivery, not just an add-on. The session highlights practical strategies for integrating technology into daily operations, aligning supports with person-centered outcomes, and designing remote support models that complement existing services. Attendees will also explore how these approaches reduce staffing strain, improve response times, and create new opportunities for independence.

Brian Hart – Heylo

Brian Hart is the CEO and Co-Founder of Heylo, a technology platform transforming supports for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). With over a decade in disability services, he works at the intersection of care delivery and innovation, helping providers modernize traditional models through remote supports, smart sensors, and real-time communication tools to increase independence and address workforce challenges. Prior to Heylo, Brian held executive leadership roles within provider organizations, leading large-scale operations and implementing technology-enabled support strategies.

AI is everywhere, but product value isn’t. This panel brings together AT product leaders supporting institutions deploying AI in real organisation. What we have learned is that capability is rarely the blocker; it’s where and how it is integrated into learning. We’ll explore where AI truly improves outcomes and where it creates noise. Panelists will unpack the questions that separate demos from real adoption: Who is the user? What task is changed? What data is permissible? What are the guardrails and human-in-the-loop? Leave with a practical lens for thinking about AI integration in your product.

Moderator:
Jeremy Brassington – Habitat Learn

Jeremy Brassington is Co-Founder and CEO of Habitat Learn Group, an EdTech company focused on AI-powered accessibility and student support. A serial entrepreneur and business angel with over 40 years’ experience, Jeremy has founded businesses across assistive technology, biotech, and financial services. Under Jeremy’s leadership, Habitat Learn has also invested heavily in scalable AI infrastructure, designed to support real-time accessibility services and integrate seamlessly with enterprise and device-level ecosystems. This infrastructure focus enables the platform to operate reliably at scale while maintaining strong privacy and security standards. Jeremy also serves as Treasurer and Board of Member for ATIA.

Panelists:
Lynne Beveridge – Habitat learn

Dr Lynne Beveridge holds a PhD from City, University of London, where her research examined the impact of dyslexia on the online information-seeking behaviour of undergraduate students. Her research interests include information behaviour, accessibility, dyslexia, inclusive design, personalised learning and the use of AI to support disabled and neurodivergent learners in higher education. She has multiple peer reviewed publications and has presented at international conferences. Current research projects explore innovate approaches to technology to move beyond one-size-fits-all accessibility towards more personalised, context-aware support.

Varun Chandak – Access to Success

Varun Chandak is the Founder and Executive Director of Access to Success, a Toronto-based non-profit on a mission to Enable Everyone. Driven by his own lived experiences with disabilities and hopes of better assistive tech, Varun has grown ATS to be a leading global innovation hub for accessibility startups. Under his leadership, ATS has expanded its reach to 40+ countries and its startups have benefited over 2.5 million people with disabilities worldwide. Varun has a professional background in financial services, holds an MBA from the University of Toronto, and is a Chartered Accountant.

Kirk Dunsavage – PRC-Saltillo

Kirk Dunsavage is Chief Technology Officer at PRC-Saltillo, one of the world’s leading developers of speech-generating devices and AAC language systems for individuals with complex communication needs. He spent 27 years at Intel Corporation in technical and leadership roles, followed by two years with the Williams Formula 1 Racing Team as Senior Technology Manager and Head of Software Development. His background spans computer vision, cloud solutions and enterprise platform strategy, giving him a distinctive cross-industry perspective on how AI is integrated into high-performance, data-intensive systems. His current work encompasses AI integration across PRC-Saltillo’s expanding product family — including its suite of AAC devices, apps and recently acquired platforms — with a particular focus on how intelligent systems can adapt to the individual communicator without compromising the reliability and trust that AAC users and their support networks depend on. He holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Arizona State University

Generic design leaves the most vulnerable learners behind. Move past baseline compliance checklists with leaders who have built companies and teams specifically for students with diverse special education needs and disabilities. Panelists will share real-world playbooks across the product lifecycle – from specialized research to inclusive QA – candidly breaking down what has worked and what hasn’t. Walk away with actionable strategies to treat specialized user needs as a core requirement across the product and company development lifecycle.

Moderator: Emma Fish – Everway

Emma Fish is Vice President of Global GTM at Everway, where she leads revenue enablement, partnerships, and policy for one of the world’s leading accessibility and neurotechnology companies. Before joining Everway, Emma spent 10+ years at Google for Education, where she led global go-to-market and partnership programs spanning Google for Education, Google Cloud, and ChromeOS. Her work focused on helping education systems, governments, and technology partners adopt technology to improve teaching, learning, and workforce readiness. Emma also serves on the Board of Directors for ATIA.

Packaging is often a user’s first interaction with a product—and too often, it creates unnecessary friction. In this session, Microsoft will share insights from its Accessible Packaging Toolkit, a practical resource grounded in real product design experience. Attendees will see how inclusive design principles translate into tangible packaging decisions, from clear visual layout and readable typography to tactile features such as pull tabs, notches, and Braille.
Designed for companies developing hardware, this session will highlight practical ways to reduce physical effort, improve usability, and create more intuitive unboxing experiences for people across a wide range of abilities—demonstrating how accessible packaging leads to better design for all users.

Amazon is building accessible experiences across shopping and entertainment — from screen reader-friendly product pages to inclusive streaming. Learn what’s working, what’s changing, and what it means for the AT industry.

Kiran Kaja – Amazon

Kiran Kaja is a Principal Product Manager at Amazon, where he leads accessibility strategy across Amazon.com and 20+ additional storefronts reaching 300M+ customers. A lifelong assistive technology user who is blind, Kiran previously built accessibility programs at Google, Instagram, and Adobe, and co-authored EN 301 549 and other accessibility standards.

This panel discussion will explore how organizations across the AT ecosystem can unlock new growth through co-marketing and collaboration. With 5 primary segments within the industry, co-marketing relationships could create a unique opportunity to expand reach, share audiences, and strengthen impact. Panelists will discuss real-world examples of successful partnerships, the challenges of aligning brands and goals, and how to build trust across diverse stakeholders. Attendees will gain insights into identifying the right collaborators, navigating competitive dynamics, and developing joint strategies that elevate awareness with shared customers, drive adoption, and create value across the broader AT market.

Moderators:
Sarah Wilds – PRC Saltillo

Sarah Wilds combines deep clinical expertise with strategic leadership in her role as CEO of PRC-Saltillo. Her commitment to inclusive communication began early, through research and presentations on AAC systems that shaped her evidence-based approach. Starting her career as a speech-language pathologist, Sarah worked in pediatric and adult clinics across New Zealand, Washington, D.C., and central Illinois. On January 1, 2025, she became PRC-Saltillo’s fourth CEO, and the first speech-language pathologist to hold the position. Sarah also serves on the Board of Directors for ATIA.

Todd Tyler – Control Bionics

Todd Tyler serves as President, North America for Control Bionics, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. He holds a Master of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Oklahoma and brings over 20 years of healthcare experience spanning speech-language pathology, sales, marketing, business development, and executive leadership. Todd leads Control Bionics’ North American commercial team, applying deep clinical and market expertise to drive adoption of the company’s assistive technology platform across the region. Todd also serves on the Board of Directors for ATIA.

Build stronger pathways to market by partnering with nonprofits that know your customers best. This session explores how to create meaningful collaborations that expand reach, accelerate adoption, and inform smarter product development. Learn practical approaches to co-creating solutions, aligning incentives, and leveraging nonprofit networks to drive awareness, trust, and impact, while strengthening your roadmap through real-world user insights and community feedback.

Karina Nagin – Bridging Voice

Karina Nagin serves as Executive Director of Bridging Voice, where she focuses on organizational strategy, program development, and partnerships to ensure the organization’s mission is carried out with integrity, effectiveness, and long-term impact. She has over 20 years of experience in social impact leadership, with a career spanning global health, humanitarian response, education, and cross-sector collaboration.

AT adoption in schools is driven by structured processes, not just product features. The Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology (QIAT) provide a nationally recognized framework that guides how schools do ATConsideration, ATAssessments, ATImplementation, Evaluate AT Effectiveness, and AT Transitions. They are used to define administrative support and provide professional development. These indicators were developed over many years as a result of collaboration of educators, parents of students with disabilities and universities.
For vendors who are interested in more fully connecting with school-based AT providers, it’s essential to understand their legal, systemic and practical needs. This session helps to translate the 8 QIAT indicator areas into practical insights that vendor representatives can use immediately to connect to your school customers. Attendees will leave with a clearer view of how industry partners can best align sales, training, and support.

Kelly Fonner – QIAT

Kelly is a volunteer leadership member of QIAT. She is a self-employed consultant and trainer in assistive and educational technology. Over the last 4 decades Kelly has presented to schools, universities & families in the US & internationally in Australia, Brazil, Canada and South Africa. She presents a wide range of topics including AT awareness & integration, AAC implementation in schools, access to reading & writing, assistive technology assessment and implementation strategies. Kelly is a volunteer leadership team member of QIAT, the Joy Zabala Fellowship Committee and the Wisconsin AAC Network.

Innovative assistive and inclusive technologies drive better outcomes when aligned with district policy, funding, and real-world implementation. Hosted by the Center on Inclusive Technology & Education Systems (CITES), this session helps solution providers understand how districts adopt and scale inclusive technologies. Drawing on implementation science and partnerships across U.S. states and districts, CITES will share how special education, accessibility, and instructional priorities shape decision-making. Learn how procurement and partnerships accelerate adoption, and how districts assess readiness, support implementation, and plan for long-term sustainability.

Christine Fox – CITES / CAST

As the CITES Project Director, Christine Fox manages the planning and implementation of CITES activities. In coordination with the center’s Principal Investigator (PI) and CAST Director of Technical Assistance, Christine coordinates the evaluation and reporting, budgeting, and leveraging of internal and external partnerships related to this project. In addition, Christine is the Chief Growth and Innovation Officer at CAST leading business development, sales, design, marketing and communications to support CAST’s mission. She is also co-project director of the Center on Inclusive Technology and Education Systems.

Irisbond shares the behind-the-scenes realities of thier 10-year journey. Offering practical insights for US companies looking toward Europe, and international teams exploring the US market.
We’ll focus on four specific challenges Irisbond faced, and how we approached them, including: Launching in Spain when market awareness, popularity, and knowledge of eye-tracking were low, overcoming the complex task of culturally and clinically adapting AAC software and activities for users in Spain, and connecting directly with end-users to build trust, gather feedback, and cultivate authentic brand advocates. We’ll also analyze Irisbond’s approach to expanding into Europe and the US by leveraging local partners for regional funding and support expertise.

Hannah Erickson – Irisbond

Hannah Erickson, IRISBOND’s US Accounts Manager, is originally from Minneapolis, MN. She graduated with a Psychology degree from the University of Minnesota and after working in her home state in literacy programs, she spent 6 years as a language trainer in Spain, and coordinated international program exchanges. Now at Irisbond, where she has been part of the team for over 5 years, Hannah leads the US team, providing eye gaze product knowledge and training to IRISBOND partners and collaborators.