Fernando Albertorio: Serial Founder, Entrepreneur and Technologist
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I am serial founder, entrepreneur with a deep scientific and technology background. I am a unique problem-solver. I bring creativity and 20-years of entrepreneurial, business and scientific/technical experience to the job. I thrive on digging into customer needs. I love creating, optimizing and scaling products that matter.
I’ve created three successful ventures, serve on the board of companies and have created programming for early-stage innovators. I’m an active alum of the world’s leading innovation networks at Y-Combinator, Techstars and MassChallenge. My company Vacca Technologies provides early-stage innovation strategy and business consulting.
Born with albinism and legally blind, I am from Ponce, Puerto Rico. My interests and talent for STEM drew initially drew me towards completing my degree in Chemistry- even though I was dissuaded by one of my instructors. My early science career involved a two-year stint at the National Institutes of Health, where I developed expertise in laboratory management. While at the NIH, I also began my volunteer advocacy work for persons with albinism and rare disease. I then completed my graduate degree in chemistry and my post-graduate work in physics at Harvard University. I’ve raised over $1.5 Million in research funding, managed research teams and designed some of the state-of-the-art laboratories for Nano-fabrication.
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S01E06 Fernando Albertorio.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Welcome to the Enabled Disabled podcast. I'm your host, Gustavo Serafini. I was born with a rare physical disability called PFG. My journey has been about self acceptance, persistence and adaptation. On the show, we'll explore how people experience disability, how the stories we tell ourselves can both enable and disable our vulnerability is the foundation for strength and why people with disabilities can contribute more than we imagined. I hope that leaders, companies, clinicians, families and friends will better understand our capacity to contribute to the world and help enable us to improve it.
Fernando Alberto Urrea is an accomplished innovator, entrepreneur and problem solver. He's an active alum of the world's leading innovation networks like Y Combinator, TechStars and Mass Challenge. His current company, Vaka Technologies, provides early stage innovation strategies and business consulting. Fernando's love for the sciences and Sharp Mind helped him get his chemistry degree and postgraduate degree in physics from Harvard University. Although Fernando's achievements are vast, his dedication to mentoring others with visual impairment and his desire to create impactful assistive technology impressed me even more.
If you want to learn more about Fernando and engage with the enable disabled community, please come visit our Facebook group. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Fernando, thank you so much for being here. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and to see you again. I really appreciate it. I wanted to kind of get started a little bit for people who don't know you never met you before. Never, never seen you online. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, about your vision story?
Yeah, of course. I was with thank you so much for having me on the show. My name is Fernando Capitolio. I was born in Puerto Rico and the town of Fonzi. And to answer your question about my vision story, well, I. I was born with the condition of ocular catchiness. Albinism are okay. And with that, I have low vision of legally blind with nystagmus. And again, of course, albinism and all the things that that come with that.
But relate to my vision. Like I said, I have a low vision and I'm legally blind. So the terms of my who I am and what I do, I am a scientist, worked in various fields of science. I have also become an entrepreneur. In the last decade. I've created various companies and technology for both web and mobile and also wearable Iot technologies. And I also provide strategic and technical consulting to various startups and technology companies who are interested in getting the products in the market.
Interesting, so when you were growing up, what got you interested in STEM in the sciences?
Sure, so part of growing up, my dad was I was a pilot for the Air Force. I had this on businesses related to aviation, so I pretty much grew up all around airplanes. It was fun to be able to get up and go up with my dad on his airplane and or with his colleagues and friends. But my dad also had a huge passion and love for science. So we also had a lot of Popular Mechanics, Scientific American magazines around the house.
He was also pretty much a very hands on in terms of mechanically always fixing things, modifying whatever he could get his hands on. So growing up in a household where where science was a big thing and very curious, I got to I pretty much got bit by the bug early on in my childhood, and I gravitated naturally towards the science. And so there were my parents. Both my parents are very supportive. I've always been very empowering and making sure that I could advocate for myself, that I had all the tools necessary to understand my condition, the limits of what I can do, and always push those in a healthy way, but also advocating for being able to advocate for myself, especially in school when it came with working with teachers and administrators.
And so along the way, I found a lot of teachers were very supportive of my interest in science. I did the science fair thing. I did a lot of projects and right out of high school hours, I had a great teacher who was a mentor as well, who got me into chemistry. And that really kind of set me off into this journey of science and especially in chemistry. I decided to pursue my degree in chemistry early on when I when I finished my high school diploma.
And I pretty much got me into the whole field of.
Interesting, and we talked a little bit about this before, but I'd like to explore some more about your love of aviation and what it how you felt going up there in the plane with your dad and and his friends and what it meant to you. Can you talk a little bit? Can we talk a little bit more about that? Because I think it's super interesting.
Yeah, of course. So my dad loved being a pilot. He loved everything about airplanes. And that obviously rubbed off of me. I was always naturally curious about how planes fly. So you got the science side, but also the practical side of being a pilot growing up in the airplane didn't have that chance of flight, really kind of did something interesting for me growing up that I didn't notice at all until much later on in life that inspired confidence and stuff, that natural curiosity for science and technology.
But it gave me as a person who living with a vision condition of that confidence, even though I would never choose or I would never become a pilot because of what the government regulations have in place for safety and all that kind of stuff. I learned to deal with that from an early age and know the boundaries. However, I also pushed those in a way that made sense for everyone, meaning that having an opportunity to fly, to be involved, to learn there was nothing stopping me from learning the the principles of flight, the how how airplanes work, understanding everything that has to do with with with piloting a small aircraft.
That was very exciting that my dad allowed that fostered that in a way that was inspiring. But for me, but also grounded in what the realities are, the reality is that I wasn't going to become a pilot or become an airline pilot or fly for the Air Force like he did or following in his career. But they also think the other thing that happened was that it inspired me to look at science, to think of STEM. I think of ways that how things work and to have the courage or the confidence to pursue those.
So where do you so I mean, I want to I want to tease that out a little bit more. So getting up in that plane with your dad gave you confidence. And what why did it give you that what was what was it about the experience you think that gave you that confidence that you didn't quite have before?
It's it's everything to do with flight. I think there's something for those people who love flying and we're very interested in an airplane, it's in a way, it's a unique experience. Be able to get up there in a small airplane, being able to take the controls of an airplane to a bank to turn to something, like I said, quote unquote, magical about it. It's amazing to think that we can we can get an aircraft from the ground up at three or ten thousand feet.
I'll be able to maneuver it. And so that alone sparked a lot of a lot of curiosity, a lot of confidence to be able to. Wow, I can I can I should do this. I can understand what instruments are reading. And what's interesting is that there are groups in Europe who who are schools for aviation who are doing a program bringing young and or adults who are blind or visually impaired and allowing them the same experience online for Howard and have the opportunity to take the controls of a small airplane in an environment that's controlled and safe, obviously with an instructor being able to have that experience of controlling an aircraft, something that you normally wouldn't think you do as an individual is living with a vision impairment or blind to to do that at six thousand or ten thousand feet.
It's pretty amazing.
That is amazing. I. Is there? Yeah, I mean, just for me, I would imagine going up on a plane as a young kid and having that be an amazing feeling, I would think that that would be at least amplified a little bit. Um. As somebody who's visually impaired, to feel that sense of control, that sense of awe and wonder of I can I can manipulate this aircraft, I can control it, I can I can feel the freedom of flight.
So I think. Do you know how that idea got started? And if it's if it's spreading, I don't know how to get started. I know that there was an article that I read, curiously enough, on a flight I was going to a conference in and I read the article while I was on my flight. And I hope it's Friday. And I hope that we can do a program like that here in the States and maybe partner up with with instructors if there's any anyone who is in the aviation area and or instructor or involved in some way to speak with them as well, because I think that, you know, a program like that could inspire not just the moment of flight and that that it and its own is really cool, but also having a lasting effect in teenagers and young adults or even adults as well who are going through the trauma of the bus.
How that experience is something I think very worthwhile.
And then hopefully it'll foster foster an interest either in aviation or, like you said, the sciences or some other area where where you get that belief again in yourself or you find a new belief in yourself and it leads you in into new directions that you didn't expect or just opening those doors for discovery, for self awareness, and to be able to challenge yourself and and pursue a career that normally you wouldn't think people who are blind or visually impaired would want to pursue.
But today we see a lot of people who are visually impaired pursuing various careers in STEM, whether whether it's research focused or technology industry focus. It's really cool to see.
Did can you talk a little bit about some of the. Some of the ways that you navigated, you know, your your degree in chemistry and maybe some of the some of the problems that you solved along the way, that might help people understand what. Your degree of Problem-Solving, creativity, determination.
Of course, so when when you're when you're living with a quote unquote, condition or disability, I think it's a it's an innate inherent to you to become a problem solver because you're you're hacking ways or finding ways to do things to to accommodate to find access of going through. My degree in chemistry was very interesting. I learned new ways to solve problems, new ways to work with people, to engage not just my my colleagues or peers, but also my instructors, so that I can actually then be able to complete a course, get a grade.
Um, I started my career in chemistry with a suggestion first day lab. I was suggested to go on to study accounting or something safer. And I challenged myself to be the highest grade in my class that year. And I did it. I was the highest grade in my lab course and my and my general chemistry. And that gave me more confidence to continue on with the career, with the with the degree. You're always solving problems, you're always finding new solutions.
And I think that's something that happens even in your career, no matter how many different careers you have or jobs you have, that ability to solve problems is something that you you keep working on. And it's always a work in progress throughout your entire life. So that's what that's what separates really, really good problem solvers from from everyone else. I see a problem is as an opportunity, something to really learn an opportunity to learn a topic and stretch myself that opportunity to engage in something that is maybe new to me or new to a group of colleagues and or whoever I'm working with.
And so throughout my entire education and chemistry, I found ways to work in the lab safely and of course, grounded in reality. And I got that from from early on in my childhood is how to advocate for myself, how to speak on behalf of what I need. I'll be able to articulate the things that I need in order to do whatever it is I'm doing. Do X, Y and Z, whether in a course or whether it's in my job or whatever I'm doing.
And so that's something that that you polish throughout the years. You keep working at it because it's your ability, it's a soft skills that you're also developing at the same time as the hard skills, the technical skills. So those two things go hand in hand as you're navigating, whether it's your your course or your degree in university, you're learning how to speak with professors and try to get what you need in order to be successful in the class on your course.
And the same thing applies to engaging with employers, engaging with managers and supervisors or your boss and being able to articulate what to ask to negotiate those things that you need, that you know will put you in a really good path for success, because that's what's going to get your head in the competition, because you're actually competing, whether it's you're competing against students or colleagues or even as an entrepreneur, you're competing with competitors and companies. And so, yeah, absolutely.
I continue problem solving. I think it's something that as a person and many people, if you speak with them, who live with various kinds of disabilities and our unique problem solvers and carry that, uh, not just on the technical side for their career, but also on the skill side.
Absolutely not. It's been. That's been a key for me, too, but, um. What is so what is your approach to problem solving? Can you give me some specific examples of. How do you develop that? Like, what is your approach when when there's a problem in front of you and, you know, this is something important, I really want to solve it. And let's say you're working with with a team of developers on a product.
What is your what is your approach to that that problem? How do you start to break it down?
Sure. I mean, when you start understanding its scope, you start looking at who's involved, who is using who's going to benefit from this problem being solved, who has the problem or the biggest pain. And you get them involved and you get them at the table. Right. And I can bring that example early on in my career when I was starting my first job right out of out of college. My my research, you know, the person who rented the principal investigator finally met me for the first time.
We did we did interviews also remote that time for my first position. It was a series of interviews and tests and stuff like that. So I finally got the offer. And that first week when I showed up, he took one look at me and he said, boy, I wish I would have known that you're visually impaired or otherwise I would not have hired you. And so that's something that when you think about a problem of being fresh in your career, that's one big one right there, because you're trying to you're starting off, you're worried about making first impressions and now you're dealing with a your boss who has an issue with doubt and confidence in your ability to do your job.
And so negotiating here against your skills are important because I knew the technical side I can handle. I knew that I could work independently in the lab. And I've done a lot of I've had a lot of experience and past jobs that allowed me to develop those skills. Now, I had to deal with this problem at a different level and which is very similar to how you develop products. You get you get the stakeholders involved. And so I actually engage them in a conversation instead of trying to say, hey, you know what, let's turn this into a different even a bigger problem.
Because what you just said is is pretty much not allowed to cause even bigger problems. What I did is I turned it around on him and it actually just thought about, OK, one of the things that we can work on together as a team. To show that I can do this research and also demonstrate to the body that I can bring to your team, because I know that I get at the technical side and I also know that within a couple of months you're going to rely on me to run a lot of this research.
And so, again, when you're same thing, when you're working with a client or when you're developing a product, a group of collaborators, you have to be able to understand their pain points, what the scope of the problem, what is success going to look like and then break it down from, OK, here's where we want to be now. Let's break it down backwards and see where we need to. What are the different things that we can do to start getting proof points and demonstrate that we're solving the problem?
And so you can you can apply a little bit of design thinking or apply a bit of of of other methods to to attack the problem, address it regardless if it's a technical or a business from.
But you were so that's super interesting, a the maturity level tonight getting maybe you did get angry, but at least you didn't show it. That is that's impressive. But be rather than say did you think, well, I'm just going to go look for I'm going to go look for another position on the side because my boss doesn't want me here.
Of course, I mean, like, yes, I guess it's very upsetting you've got that emotional side, but also you've got what is my plan B if this doesn't work out? If the relationship doesn't work, of course, you've got to think all those things. And one thing that really makes a solid entrepreneur is to always think about what are my different options? Do I pivot or do I persevere. Right. And rely on strong data to make those decisions right.
If if within one month I can get the research to where I can, we can't get this data to start validating that we're in the right direction. Do we pivot or do we persevere? And one of the important things also when we're thinking about addressing really hard problems is our ability to learn and our ability to change our minds. I've met so many people in science and tobacco fields who are reluctant to change their minds, even in the face of data.
And so to me, this is mind blowing, right?
That seems like the antithesis of what the scientific method is supposed to be right myself.
But you find this all over the place, right? I mean, we can name a lot of examples here and spend an hour on it. But what I what I what is important as an individual to continue to be a great problem solver is the ability to take an feedbag, taking ideas from other people, taking data from what you're doing, and reassess yourself and decide and look at the situation and say, hey, given this new data, I really need to really change my thinking about this or I need to pivot and that and doing that.
And that's OK and no, it's OK and because it's all about something that is bigger than you and your ego or than your own feelings, and how do you how do you deal with or how do you try to separate those biases? Right. So if you're trying to develop a product, you want it to work or you want to convince you're going to persuade your boss that you're the right person for the job, at what point do you say.
How do you look at the data and get a better understanding of whether or not there is a bias creeping in there that's causing you to misinterpret the data maybe or get too tied to tied down to the result that you want?
Well, there's a great entrepreneur I met, I read his book as Steve Blank, actually I haven't been in business with I read his book and a lot of his videos. And one of the things I can say is I get out of the building. Right. And so when you're when you're in in the trenches and you're you're getting all this data and you're worried about your own bias because we all have it right. I mean, anyone tells you that, oh, I can work, I'm biased.
Well, you might want to take that with a little bit of a grain of salt because we all get attached to what we create, to what we build or to what we're investigating because we're passionate about it when you have a lot of passion. It's hard sometimes to to separate out that bias because we just internally, we want it to work. But if you're able to surround yourself with a strong team or with mentors, advisors, you can also take a look or a fresh perspective.
I find that getting a fresh perspective on a data or on anything that I'm working on is a very powerful thing. And it really kind of helps to find yourself again and realize that all my biases coming from this, we all have them and be able to check yourself there against someone who is trusted or a mentor. Even sometimes your own customers could be very helpful with that as well. You get used to is have to listen for it and be willing to listen to it.
And that will help you navigate those decisions where you could recognize where my biases are coming in when we're developing the product or we want really want something to work and realizing that, hey, maybe I'm applying a little bit too much wishful wishful thinking here. Let's take a step back. Let's understand why this isn't happening and always getting better at the root. And sometimes it involves talking to a lot of people outside of where you are whenever possible.
I agree, something that I try to think of when I'm working on a problem is it doesn't matter if my hypothesis or my solution is right or wrong, it matters that we as a team get it right. And so, you know, being kind of not getting attached to what I think the solution is helps me better assess the different options and the direction that we go that we go on as a team. But I think you you mentioned an interesting word there, mentoring that I wanted to dove into as well.
I know there's a lot of successful entrepreneurs out there who have different takes on mentoring. How do you feel about mentoring? Do you do any mentoring? Like what is that? What is what does mentoring mean to you? How does that how do you get involved there, if at all?
The first and second of all, the mentoring activities I'm currently on working with an organization on the board of directors called Team Possibilities. And the the purpose of team see possibilities is, number one, to inspire and to help build the next generation of of mentors and opportunities for students who are blind and visually impaired. To see possibilities was created by a fellow named Develin, serial entrepreneur, very successful in business. He's also a blind athlete. He's an endurance sports athlete.
And so Dad uses his experience as an athlete to inspire. He'll do like ultramarathons or he'll do some really hard, crazy sports endurance challenge to show people that you're not limited by a visual condition. There are ways in which people with disabilities can actually accomplish really hard things that very few people in the world will try, like an ultramarathon or running run to run on the Grand Canyon and really encourage people to visit their site. There's a very exciting, interesting business there.
But what Dan has done is taken this a step further to provide mentorship to students who are starting university students who are blind to low vision and who are getting into various career path, whether it's them or whether it's a business or legal or social work. It doesn't matter what you're studying. It is that we want to create more opportunities. Unfortunately, in when it comes to disabilities, a lot of people who are watching television have a really high unemployment rate, not just in this country, but also in other countries worldwide.
Over sixty seven percent unemployment rate. And it's. Similar to other areas and other disabilities, but I know very well the for the visual. And so what we will we want to achieve with teams possible is creating that type of follow. We can empower more students to pursue a degree, a career path. We're building the next generation of of mentors for the next group of students. Meanwhile, I think see possibilities. We we actually bring in mentors who are low vision or blind, who are actually doing it so who are in different careers, whether they're entrepreneurs, whether they're in tech or whether they're in legal fields to engage with our students on a monthly video call, video conference and provide advice and share stories and also have that connectivity with students.
Mentorship is very important, I think mentorship. Whether you're starting out your career as a student early on, we all we all have benefited from mentors in our studies and a career early on and even later in life as well as we pay it forward. And I've heard that a lot. And so that's a that's a really cool thing to do. And you get a lot out of it as a mentor yourself. So being a mentor actually opens a lot of possibilities for you as a as a as a mentor, not just for the person you're working with.
So can you give us some examples of those possibilities that it opens up? Was that something that you knew ahead of time or is that something that was like you experienced when you were a little you were pleasantly surprised?
I think I experienced that in many different ways of being a mentor. It may not be immediate and obviously you don't volunteer just to see what you get out of stuff. But it could be indirectly, it could be the satisfaction of seeing someone accomplish something awesome or go through their career sharing your lived experiences with them. And even some of the questions that you get will help challenge yourself and help you open your mind to new ideas to other students that you may have mentored could now go on to new positions and find opportunities.
And they connect with you later on on on interesting projects or or other ideas, for instance. And so it's something that you discover along the way as being a mentor. I think the program is a team. See, possibilities is wonderful because we're connecting students not just with mentors, but we're also preparing them to be the next generation of mentors to bring that connectivity and continue that cycle forward.
It's super important. It's like it's it's a virtuous a virtuous circle. Um. And in terms of that, is there any data that you are aware of that shows that it exists in general for people who have college degrees, what their job opportunities look like versus people who don't? Is there any data that you know of for people with some type of disability, college educated versus not college educated, how much it increases their employment opportunities?
That's a really good question. I don't actually have any hard data with me on that topic right now, but we're tracking our end of funnel. Basically, unemployment rates within within the same particular area. Disabilities like visual impairment, visual impairments. The unemployment rate is pretty high. Sixty seven percent of you can then look at. But then when you survey people and you ask people what kind of jobs are doing, what's interesting is you get a huge variety of of of people doing different kinds of jobs, careers in this area.
So people are long people who are in finance or business, which is very exciting, which shows that, yes, we need to do have more programs, have more awareness for companies, employers, that there is huge opportunity in opening the door for someone who can do the job. But it's also maybe visually impaired and that you may have the bias that, oh, this is going to be a very difficult thing. How can we change that? How can we change that narrative to something more, something different?
That this is an opportunity to engage with a unique problem solver? This is an opportunity to engage with someone who could mentor other people and bring and attract new talent or also engage with your customers or discover new customers for you as an employee. And so I think that that's something that we're learning a lot about in terms of that data. We know that it's a wide variety. In terms of the academic data, we know that a high percentage of folks who are visually impaired may not go beyond the the fourth year of high school.
Fortunately, with online education, with the way things have progressed in the latest decade or so, I think we're seeing a shift in that. And I think it's super exciting that we can have different ways in which to earn a degree, whether it's completely online, whether it's a hybrid or in-person person. And so we're seeing we're seeing that impact, hopefully, and I hope it becomes bigger.
Absolutely. And I love the idea of having that flexibility to say, you know, I want to I was not that I'm going to do it, but I was looking at cybersecurity degrees. And Georgetown has a program and they're offering that flexibility to 20 years ago, you know, you would not have that ability to to take online classes and and get a degree that you'd be interested in.
Yeah, the really cool thing that we're seeing is in the tech and various fields in tech programing, development or user experience design, um, other areas that you can you can go about the traditional route or there's many options to to either do a fully online program, do a hybrid, or start with a boot camp of their various amenities and offer offer courses, prep work for different areas and tech. And so it's providing more pathways for people with disabilities to engage with with with a career choice that may be on the outlook you're looking at from the outside.
You don't think it's very obvious, right. But actually allowing how does that remote slash online modes of training makes it very convenient for someone who is living with a condition disability, whether it's mobility or whether it's visual or other to engage with that program and to complete that those requirements and then find opportunities?
Absolutely. And an opportunity to build more opportunities. Right. So hopefully as more. Say people with some type of visual impairment or any disability, get those degrees, get hired, they're going to create more opportunities for more people and hopefully those employers on their next hire will be more open to. Hiring people and making those usually not always, but usually small accommodations or letting their letting their people engage in the problem solving the way you did. Right. And you just for example, you showed your first boss, I can run this lab, I can do this data.
Ideally. Your boss, the next time he would hire somebody would be more open to accepting a wider diversity of people, of course, because that experience that you provide in those encounters speaks to what can happen in the future. So you have to take a different lens to think that, hey, how I react to this and what I do next could impact the opportunity for someone else coming after me. That's something that you have to think about and granted, you still have to think about yourself and you have to advocate for yourself, but there's always that in the background.
Absolutely. I know that you also have a. Passion for assistive technology, and I wanted to explore that a little bit with you, where you see the state of assistive tech right now, how it's how we can grow it, how we can kind of break down more of those barriers and show how important it is. So can you speak a little bit about where you are? I know you've you've had a bunch of you've helped develop a bunch of companies, but assistive technology.
Where is your area of interest? How do we see that? How do we grow that moving forward? And what are some of the barriers to that growth right now?
Sure. So my first assistive technology was a handheld magnifier. I got the choice when I was a kid. I was given the choice between a flashlight or a handheld loop, and I chose to be the right choice. And since then, I was always curious about this attack, because at that time the CCTV that was in large print for me were super expensive at the cost of a small car. And so, you know, we couldn't afford that.
And yet I always kept an eye on assistive tech. And when I came to college, I had a bioptic of classes that would allow me to see to see the handwriting on the board and to engage with content and distance again. That that that kind of started my my, my, my curiosity in it assistive technologies. And I've done a couple of research projects with biotics and other kinds of tech. My first entrance into the whole world of of enabling tech was with my company so new that I helped co-found and Cotabato, we were making a product that is a wearable technology to improve awareness, yet still function as a complement to the white cane or guide dog for people who are watching television.
And so the technology is a wearable smartwatch or band that uses radar sonar to sense the environment and then provide the migration, have the keys to the individual so that you know how close you are to an obstacle and what they idea to reduce accidents and improve mobility. And in a system navigation, I worked on it for four or five years, developing the product and taking it to market. And we got the product into right now. Today it's in over 50 countries and we have a huge partnership, a network of partners and over thirty two countries.
And we're working with some of the largest institutions for the blind and visually impaired. And so having done an assistive technology, not just the wherewithal, the mobile app has always kept me involved in the community of technology entrepreneurs or developing solutions for for for a variety of of conditions, whether it's motor or cognitive hearing or vision with a variety of early stage entrepreneurs developing tech in this area. I think the biggest thing happening in tech is the smartphone. The iPhone has a lot of sensors within it that enable us to engage with our environment, with our environment.
First and foremost is the camera. The camera my smartphone allows me to see at a distance so I don't have to use a bioptic. All that now comes built into a nice device that fits in my pocket. It allows me to read a menu or allows me to see the information from my next flight. It allows me to travel independently because I can connect to Google. I have connectivity with a variety of apps. And so what's happened with the smartphone is that now?
And I hope this continues. The trend is that assistive technology devices used to be very expensive because they were made for each. But now with the advent of the smartphone and mobile apps, it's actually becoming much more accessible and that's driving the cost down in assistive technology. Because now it's taking something that was for a nation not making much more ubiquitous and you have apps like Uber and the Card and other apps that are serving everyone out there. And again, people who are blind and visually impaired need to think about the need to engage with them.
So it becomes a question of candy. Developers of these technologies make them more universal, of what are they going to do to improve access within the apps because the apps for themselves can be great assistive technology, one for transportation, the other one for food delivery. Right. Or you have more specialized apps to read documents or read mail, which are great. But if it all goes down to how we design the product and how we can make this product more universal so that different groups of users can enjoy the same benefit that it's intended for victims, it does.
So that's a matter of. Hoping those app developers. Gain a better awareness of. Universal of universal design principles or of better design thinking to think through more and more use cases, essentially. Is that correct?
Exactly, because the phone, the smartphone has now turned the technology into something that everyone or more ubiquitous people who are blind or vision impaired have access to. Smartphones are using them right now. Right. And so we're having we're seeing an explosion of apps that are made for the blind to do various things. But we're also seeing a demand from the visually impaired community to have better access to not just the phone technology within it, but also the apps that are being created for that platform, whether it's for Google Play or for or for iOS.
And so that is actually creating an interesting and exciting opportunity for creators of of applications developers to to really apply these principles of universal design access early on during the design process involve people of different abilities at the table from the beginning so that it's not an afterthought and you're not running into other issues when you release a product. And all of a sudden it's being used by everyone. Everyone wants their product to be used. But if it's not accessible, then you encounter other other other potential challenges downstream.
But you're also limiting yourself as a developer because you're intentionally kind of sabotaging your own product if you don't make it accessible for people of different abilities. Itself with now of the platforms being much more mature and demand happening now. It's a great opportunity for developers to think universal access while they're designing their products early on.
And that's something that universal, universal design thinking is that's something that still isn't incorporated into those those engineering developer degrees. That's something that they have to learn after school. Is that part of is that part of the challenge?
I'm not going to answer too much that I think I think that there's plenty of opportunities to learn about universities and whether the curriculum setting. But also there's the practical side. I focus on the practical side. Again, it goes back to you know, you asked me how do you solve problems where you get people who are experiencing the problem. You get people who are at the table who will benefit from this problem being solved if those individuals around the table and include them in the design process early on rather than later.
Woody, what do you think for that to say, the devil's advocate for a second, right. You hear this from companies a lot is that our development costs are going up. So in order to design more inclusively, it's going to cost us X number of dollars more up front than if we don't. And the user base is already wide enough. How do you answer that? How do you.
The question I was I attended a webinar yesterday on the new W three C or the new Weikart 3.0 that's just been released January and the Q and A. There are some good questions coming up from companies or developers about that. How do we convince stakeholders in our company that accessibility has to be done? It can't just be an exercise and you can actually frame it in that it creates opportunity and opportunity, can improve and bring new lines of business. Sixty seven percent of Americans are living with some form of disability, regardless if it's visual, physical or cognitive.
That's a huge percentage of people that you're leaving out and the business case. And so by addressing accessibility in design early on, you are basically setting yourself up to open new lines of business. And it's not that expensive to do early on, however, and we've seen this now in various court cases that it can be pushing yourself to more risk if you don't address that. And we've seen the cases of large Web sites being sued for lack of accessibility.
We've had the case for Domino's Pizza, for instance, that went to the Supreme Court. And so, again, it could open up more risk. It could end up being a more costly thing for for your company. But what we talked about yesterday is that instead of looking at that lens, let's look at it from the opportunity side. The creativity side is that it's actually creating opportunities by addressing, designing in and making in the accessibility of the product or of the of what you're building or the product early on.
I agree, I think that's a great answer. Um. And it also ties back to what you were saying before, right as we. Yet more opportunities as we get as we get our seat at the table, that's going to that's going to drive more change over time as well. So it's it's not something that's going to happen overnight, but it's it can consistently improve Europe on Europe. One year, Dr.. So my last question for you, Fernando, is there anything that I missed, you know, in this talk that you think is really important to discuss that we didn't get to?
I think that we covered a wide variety of topics from but I think that the debate on the big topic here is. You're not limited by a disability. In fact, you heard I saw one of his talks early on. He's a professor at MIT who lost his limbs during a accident, a climbing accident in Mount Everest and also lost sight. And what he said in a talk really stuck with me. He said that no human being should ever be labeled as disabled.
That all we are all we have are broken environments. And I think that being a person living with low vision, legally blind has inspired me to think outside the box, to be a unique problem solver and solve these broken environments, whether it's a lab at a university or a lab for a course or a new job, or I'm developing a new product or working with a team of people with disabilities, have an opportunity and have a unique ability to solve problems in a unique way, bring a fresh perspective that can bring big opportunities in the immediate and long term future.
Absolutely, I agree, I agree 100 percent, and I think that's a fantastic way to to wrap things up. If people if people want to find out more about you, Fernando, where can they go? Where do they where do they contact? Do they contact you for new and exciting projects?
Thank you. So you can visit me at Fernando Arbitrageur dot com. I imagine you have links to that on the sites, but by visiting on the Web, follow me on social media there. I'm on Facebook and of course, oratorio also. My company is back on technologies. You can look at the exciting projects that we're working on there and we provide strategic and technical advice to product developers and small businesses that are working on innovation. And I'm pretty much all over the Web and them.
Beautiful. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Thank you. It's great being on the show. Thank you so much for doing the podcast. Absolutely.
Helpful links:
Fernando Albertorio: www.fernandoalbertorio.com/
