Eamon McErlean and Joe Devon talk with Darryl Adams, founder of Access Insights and former director of accessibility at Intel, about how progressive vision loss and single-sided deafness shaped his career and approach to technology. Adams discusses technology as an enabler, the trust and situational awareness involved in physical guiding, and the potential for AI to replace rigid graphical interfaces with more personalized, conversational experiences. He also explains how Access Insights, a research and design agency, helps disability-focused innovations successfully scale in the market.
OUTLINE:
00:00 Opening Teaser
00:54 Introduction
01:32 Diagnosis at Age 14 & Personal Journey
03:38 Mental Health & Vision Loss
05:39 Early Career at AOL
08:23 The Power of Sighted Guiding
11:48 Sighted Guiding Etiquette & Best Practices
14:05 Adopting Assistive Technology at Intel
17:09 Building an Accessibility Career
18:24 Rethinking Interfaces with AI
24:37 Darryl’s Daily AI Workflow
32:28 Future of Work: AI Risks & Rewards
37:09 Career Advice for Accessibility Professionals
39:37 Inside Intel: Chips & Software
43:55 Access Insights: Co-Design, Research & Scale
49:43 Closing Thoughts
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EPISODE LINKS:
Access Insights
https://accessinsights.net
Unison OS
https://unisonos.ai
OpenAI - Codex
https://openai.com/codex/
Verilog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verilog
Darryl Adams on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dadamspdx/
- When we're thinking about guiding, this is a physical thing where somebody who is sighted is allowing somebody who is blind or visually impaired to either take their elbow or their shoulder and just walk with them. And the sighted person is making sure that they're not going to run into anybody or anything in the path, and just kind of keeping things safe. But it's such an opportunity to go beyond just the mechanics of that and to have the richer conversations.
- Is there a right way and a wrong way to do that?
- Yeah. I wanted to actually ask that as a follow-up because I once guided Jennison right into a glass door. I felt so-
- That would be the wrong way.
- Bad about that. But you taught me some new tips, so, yeah. Welcome to Accessibility and GenAI, the podcast where we talk to the people shaping the world of accessibility and artificial intelligence. My name is Joe Devon, and I'm here with my co-host, Eamon McErlean. And today, I'm excited because we're speaking with a good friend of mine, Darryl Adams, who is the founder of Access Insights and creator of UnisonOS. Before that, Darryl was Intel's Director of Accessibility. I view him as a mentor, a visionary, and a friend. Welcome to the pod, Darryl.
- Thank you, Joe, Eamon, awesome to be here.
- Darryl, thanks for joining us. Appreciate your time. Before we go down your professional journey, your professional path, would love to learn a little bit more about your personal journey and your diagnosis when you were 14 years old. Would you mind sharing with the listeners just kind of how things began for you as it relates to disabilities and high-level understanding of your journey?
- Sure thing. Yeah, I think it's important because that journey has shaped pretty much everything that I've done technically and in my career. So, it's a good place to start. So, I, as you noted, when I was 14, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, RP. And at the time I had pretty decent vision, I think, certainly passable vision, certainly recognized some things that were a little bit off, but not too impactful. But I was told that over time, I was going to lose all, or most, if not all, of my vision, but that was a thing to think about for the future. When I was in college, I think that my senior year in college, I had an ear surgery that ended up with me losing all of my hearing in my right ear completely, as well as they cut my facial nerve and my auditory nerve, and destroyed my vestibular canal. So, I had to relearn balance, basically, from scratch with one ear. And that together, those two things, over time, this progressive vision loss, along with this single-sided deafness has really shaped a lot of what I think about the value of technology in terms of seeing technology sometimes as a barrier, but then more importantly, seeing technology as the enabler to do a lot of the things that I want to do in life. So, I've kind of made that a hallmark of my career is to figure out how to make the most use of technology to get around the barriers that I face.
- Yeah, it always amazes me when individuals get diagnosis like that or that severe. You don't mind me asking, how do you handle it from like a mental health perspective, especially at that age?
- Going back, my feeling is that I don't know that I did. At 14, I think I had a lot more things on my mind that were just more pressing as a teenager. And I thought that while the news isn't good, I feel like it's something that I'm gonna have to deal with later. But then I think as I got a little bit older, kind of into college and just on the other side of college, it's where I really started to think, "Well, I'm noticing the difference here. Now I'm starting to make decisions that I otherwise would not have made had I not been losing my sight." And those decisions have become pretty impactful, like the decision to stop driving a vehicle, the decision to stop riding my bike. Like, all these things that are pretty profound when you are a young adult, and beginning to raise a family, and all the different things that you see that you would want to do that you're now making decisions about not doing. So, that was pretty tough. I think the bigger challenge for me was the realization that, fairly early in my career, this idea that I may not be able to compete in my job just due to the progressive vision loss, thinking about the work that I do and the way that I do it, and whether or not I could not only just do it and continue to do it, but do it at a high level to where I am competitive in my role. And that really was the beginning of what I would call a seven-year journey for me to tackle and confront vision loss head on.
- And to then begin your journey, you were at Intel for... Was it just under 28 years overall?
- Yep.
- And were you anywhere before that or you dove straight into Intel?
- Yeah, so actually, out of college, I started working at AOL.
- That's right.
- And it's a funny connector here because AOL, in the mid-'90s, the internet was just starting to become something. And then AOL was this little walled garden that was within this internet context. But what was interesting about this is that I had my degree, my bachelor's degree is in finance. And so, I really had no business going into a technology job, but it just sounded interesting. But I got a crash course in everything internet to do that job. So, everything about troubleshooting a PC, troubleshooting a Macintosh computer, and then really importantly, troubleshooting and understanding how internet connectivity works with dial-up modems, and all the different things that were enabling people to go to connect to AOL or the internet. And then just even, like, everything from those mid-'90s, rudimentary HTML webpages. So I got... In a year and a half of experience with AOL, I was able to essentially parlay that experience into my job at Intel because Intel was looking for the exact skillset that I gained from AOL. So, if I didn't go down that path, I would never have been working at Intel either because they were looking for folks that understood internet technology as a general concept. So, even though I didn't have a software engineering background at the time, I was a perfect fit for that exact thing at that exact moment. And so, I kind of just, I hit it correctly.
- Yeah, and AOL was groundbreaking in those days. Was that like '95, '96 timeframe?
- Yeah. Yes.
- Every time I think of AOL, I think of the old modem sound. Remember that old startup modem sound?
- I do. And it's one quick point on that as well is that they... So I got that great education there, the hands-on education, but they also, through stock options, I was able to pay off my student loans as I left the company.
- Nice.
- Just in a year and a half, I blank-slate on student loans. So I was able to move into Intel with a just clean slate. It was fantastic.
- Awesome.
- Let's discuss a topic that I have not seen anybody write about, talk about, no podcasts. I've never seen this discussed. I had the great honor at a conference. You asked if I could guide you, be like your guide during the week, which has a particular meaning for someone who's blind. And I really enjoy that experience, not just with you, but with other friends who are blind. It's something that a lot of people do not get to experience. There's a certain bonding that happens between two people when you have a guide, and it's just nothing you can really explain easily. But, I thought it was profound. I thought it made the two of us better friends, even though we were quite good friends before. I'd love to hear how you see it from your perspective.
- Yeah, it's fantastic. So, I agree with everything that you just mentioned that I think from both sides of that equation, it's a bonding moment. And this can be, in our case, we were coming from a position where we're friends, we understood each other. And so, it was a pretty natural fit, but this also can apply to any context, even if it's just a... Maybe even a stranger that needs to... That you need some assistance from for a basic task. The coming together as people, it's just a core human experience that... How to explain? I think it's it's an opportunity that is unique in the sense that we don't do this typically in our day-to-day lives. Folks are not usually just out there engaging with each other at the level of closeness that's required. And so, when we're thinking about guiding, this is a physical thing, where somebody who is sighted is allowing somebody who is blind or visually impaired to either take their elbow or their shoulder and just walk with them. And the sighted person is making sure that they're not going to run into anybody or anything in the path, and just kind of keeping things safe. But it's such an opportunity to go beyond just the mechanics of that and to have the richer conversations. Especially for us, we were there for a few days at this conference, so we had a lot of time to walk around and work through the nuances of what it means to guide successfully, but also to learn more about each other and just... It's just such a unique experience. And I'm glad that you presented it the way that you did because I feel like there's, like, when you have a disability and you're asking for help, it can be difficult, especially if you're new to disability. Asking for help is a really difficult thing. But we always recognize that when you are... That most of the time, people really enjoy providing assistance. It's like a weird dynamic, like you're okay providing it-
- It's an opportunity.
- But not really asking for it, yeah.
- It's an opportunity and an honor to be asked.
- Is there a right way and a wrong way to do that?
- Yeah, I wanted to actually ask that as a follow-up because I once guided Jennison right into a glass door. I felt so-
- That would be the wrong way.
- Bad about that. But you taught me some new tips, so, yeah.
- So I think technically, you can actually... There's an education around this. So, yes, there's a right way, and yes, there's a wrong way, but really the key is that an open mind is the key ingredient. Because, yes, as somebody who's inexperienced, you may make a mistake, you might have somebody trip or you might have them run into something. And as long as you didn't do it intentionally, the person being guided can also understand that these are the mistakes that just happened. But the key is that you learn from them and you grow in that capability. And it's very quick. It's not rocket science to do this. It just takes a little bit of situational awareness to make sure that you're both walking through a given space in a safe manner. I think that probably the big thing that I would say is when it comes to doing it right versus doing it wrong, is it's okay to offer help, but don't necessarily assume that the answer is yes to begin with, and don't thrust your help upon somebody unless they've agreed to that. And it's all... In a blind guiding situation, the move is to allow the person who is blind or visually impaired to reach out to you, and whether it's your elbow, or your shoulder, or whatever, whatever's comfortable for them is really that's your cue. It's not you grabbing them and leading. You're guiding without actually initiating the actual connection.
- Yeah.
- If that makes sense.
- Yeah, very personalized. No specifically one right way or one wrong way, I guess. Yep. So, going back to your transition from AOL to Intel, at what point did Assistive Technology start to become part of your life on a more consistent basis?
- Well, it was early 2000s, probably. It was pretty early on in my career. So, my main role for the first 10, 15 years at Intel was really around technical program and project management. So, I was leading technical teams on everything from R&D projects to enterprise software implementations, physical products, software products, a lot of different... A range of different technologies, but it's all about: How do you lead teams of technologists to deliver products that deliver value? And the tools that you use to do that job well, a lot of them are just pure, simply computer software. But there's a lot of things that also require like, or at the time, the way that we did these was like in person, in conference rooms, using whiteboards, using sticky notes, things that were very tech... Very physically, and... Physically complex, as well as visually complex. And I started realizing that in my role leading these sessions, it's like I'm fully capable of doing this. This is like what, like, my... This is my expertise, but my physical ability to follow all of the visual nature of that was really becoming limiting. And I noticed it was starting to limit or change the way that I was thinking about how I run projects. And I got really concerned about it because I was, like, "I can't compete with my fellow project managers because I'm gonna do this... I'm not gonna do the same techniques."
- Mm-hmm.
- So, from that point, I just started saying, "Okay, I'm going to... I'm gonna figure out how I can use, at the time, magnification and some degree of screen reading to completely enable myself to remain on that level playing field." And then, very quickly, as I started going down that path and realizing the benefit, but a lot of the limitations at the time, I thought to myself that I'm working at a global technology company with brilliant people. And wouldn't it be great if I could, instead of just focusing on myself in my own personal career, maybe I could help influence the company to think about how we can create the building blocks of technologies that can work better for more people. And then, ultimately, I didn't think at the time, but make a career out of doing that.
- And Intel were supportive during that journey?
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I think it wasn't a light switch. Like, I started, that path was more like me making that realization and then saying, "How do I do that?" And I started volunteering with our employee resource group focused on disabilities, and then started meeting more people with different types of disabilities and understanding what their barriers were. And then, what was nice about this, and this is kind of a... Like, I'm kind of proud of this trajectory in a way in that... So I started off with volunteer, and then I got a new job, and I told the manager of the new job that 20% of my time was dedicated to this disabilities and accessibility space. And then, that just became codified. And then, I got a new manager, and I told him that half of my job was this disability accessibility space, and then that became codified. And then, the next time, it was most of my job. And then, it just became my job. And I just manifested it that way because there's just... It's so obvious how much opportunity is in that space, but it did take several years to climb that or to create that path.
- Smart way to do it. Yeah.
- Now, I'm gonna ask you this question in a very open-ended way, because I know you have a lot to say about it. How do you view AI?
- Wow. I am very optimistic. I'm very optimistic about technology in general. And then, AI in particular, and maybe the last couple of years of sort of the LLM-fueled progression of AI, but then also all of the additional context with everything else that may fall underneath the gen AI umbrella, with diffusion models and all the different ways that you experience LLMs through everything from coding harnesses to chat interfaces. All of these things are... We're just now seeing the actual potential to change the way that people, our relationship with our technology. I've been saying that for years, but it's always felt like a little bit of a sci-fi-type of vision of the future. But it's pretty clear today that we're able to, even though there are plenty of limitations, still, the idea that you can interact with your computer, or your phone, or what your device in general in a very conversational way and get meaningful results from that conversation is a critical maybe turning point in the evolution of how we think about how technology is embedded in our lives or interleaved into our lives. Think about the... The idea of an interface. And so, when you think about an interface, it's something that's bridging the gap between two things that aren't the same. And typically, if two people are communicating with each other and they speak the same native language, there's no interface. You're communicating directly and there's no need for an interface. But as soon as you put technology in the mix, you have an interface. Typically, that's a graphical user interface, but it could be something different. And that interface is basically saying that the computer has its language and its way of doing things, the person has its language and its way of doing things, and now you have to figure out how to come together. What AI is now doing is changing that and saying, "The person no longer has to understand the technology. The technology has to understand them." And the more that we can move down this path, where the technology that you're using fundamentally understands you, the less you'll have to understand about how it is working. And this, ultimately, there's a much larger conversation down this path around trust. The only way that any of this works is trust has to be earned in this process. And our ability to trust our technology is something that is a major challenge to begin with, but I think is doable. And once it's doable, it unlocks many of, like, the real future opportunities that I see possible with AI. And it really has a lot to do with the idea of abstraction and abstracting away all of the details, and letting technology take care of them and us as people doing what people like to do best as well, which is, basically, it's a... It's roles and responsibilities. Let people do what we like to do and let technology do what we're not good at doing, but trust that it's doing it and doing it on our behalf, and having our best interest in mind. And just to wrap that up, I don't want to suggest that we are there today. I think there are a lot of gaps in the current offering that make it so... that necessary trust to realize that vision is not implicit today and is maybe not to be expected. But I think there are pathways to get us to where that trust can be established and maintained over time, and it'll enable all of these things.
- Yeah, from what we're seeing from a platform perspective, we're seeing a shift from... You always had them different personas, a requester persona, fulfiller, admin, et cetera. And that interface, to your point, obviously would change based on your persona. We are pushing and we see that change towards more of a truly personalized, dynamic, multimodal interface. And from a accessibility and AI perspective, that can be really exciting. But it also can be concerning because if it's not done properly, there can be a lot of gaps there, especially from a design and UI perspective. So, we're just trying to make sure that that trust, to your point, and that trust can mean many things across many different areas is embedded from the start because Bill McDermott's got a great saying, "You build trust in drops and you lose it in buckets." And it's very true.
- Absolutely.
- Trying good from the start.
- All that said, how do you apply that in real life? How are you using AI today? Or as Clarevo says, how do you AI?
- So I am embedded in this AI work model my entire day, probably with the exception of being in meetings, where I guess AI is still involved with the recording, and the transcripts, and the summarization, and whatnot. But everything that I do with a computer today is through a... Well, specifically through Codex and the harness that is the GPT Desktop app. And we've talked about this in the past, but my usage evolves as rapidly as I can make it evolve without going completely... Without making myself crazy trying to keep up with the daily change rate. So, one of the things that I came to terms with in the past year is that the rate of change itself is increasing to the point where myself, I think people in general, in particular myself, I can't reasonably keep up with understanding all of the changes and applying them to get meaningful work done consistently because the overhead that is required to understand the nature of the change and how to apply it, it takes more time. And so, you can't have a daily change rate. So, what I decided was that I... It's kind of like the old Google work model, where I try to roughly spend 20% of my time thinking about the frontier and listening for what is changing, understanding what is available, projecting out why that might be interesting to me, and figuring out when I should adopt new models, or new harnesses, or whichever. But then the remaining 80% of my time, I try to stay on a static, call it, well, a static work environment, which would mean, in this case, like today, I'm just using a Windows system with Codex and the GPT Desktop app. But last month, I was using my Linux system with CLI exclusively. And just as I see the capabilities, new capabilities come online, where I see I can get much more automation or just more value from, then I will adopt it. But I'm kind of trying to do that in no... I'm trying to be as no more quickly than monthly. So, I got to reevaluate every month and make changes as I see fit. But I'm trying to have some discipline to that because, otherwise, it's really difficult to actually track work when you're just changing too many things about the way that you're working.
- You've identified my problem perfectly. I'm, like, listening to this like, "Oh, my God, I'm the opposite, 80% on finding the frontier and then changing everything every day. I got to listen to that." But I'm curious on the Windows platform does... Because on the Mac, the computer use is fantastic with Codex. Is there computer use? Can it talk to your assistant like screen readers? Can it take over the computer as well as it does on the Mac?
- Yes. So, I don't know if it's a direct comparison. And what I would say is that it's meeting my expectations in the sense that it's working and it is worth my time to learn the nuances for what it does well and what it maybe doesn't do as well or not consistently. So, the effort is... Or the value is worth the effort, in this case. But I also say that it feels like software that is in a very rapid, but consistent, state of formation. The amount of... The frequency in which I come in, and there are updates, and now the software is behaving slightly differently, usually for the better, but not always. It's a little bit... It presents a challenge in terms of my ability to navigate the UI of that software. And that's why historically, I was using the CLI interface because it was just more consistent. But I do believe that the general computer use capability as a way to augment workflows that aren't yet enabled through an API, or an MCP, or something like that is definitely something that was very helpful to me. In fact, I would say that, so I think earlier this year or sometime late last year, I think we had a conversation where I told you that I was hoping that 2026 was going to be the last year that I ever interact with a form on the web.
- Yes.
- And actually, I wanna double down on that today and say that I still think that is true, or that is still my goal. Given my difficulties with UIs and the design, especially poorly-designed UIs, and in particular interactive forms on a computer, the amount of irritation that I get from that process is kind of profound. I love technology, but nothing drives me more crazy than me trying to transact with a company and getting stuck on a form that I can't figure out how to submit because I feel like I'm pretty technical. And when I have to ask my wife to come in and help me submit a form, there's nothing more broken about that to me.
- Yeah.
- And so, to the extent that I can have an agent work on my behalf and I'll never see that form, but I can just say, "Go do... Take my intent and go make it happen," that means the world. And I do believe that I'll be at a point, it may not be the most efficient thing by January of '27, but it'll be certainly game on there in terms of my goal.
- On that note, like, continuing on the general question thread, high-level, what are the biggest things that excite you or that you think are really positive from an AI perspective, and what's some of your bigger concerns overall?
- I think there's some existential things here, but the excitement and the concern, it's almost like the same path. And so, what I'm excited about is this... Like, to get excited, I guess, I like to think about more of like a longer historical view and seeing ourselves today plotted on a timeline that goes back, say, a couple few hundred years, and then moves into the future. And when you look at humanity's progression in that context, the way that we work today and that the way that we are familiar with working for the duration of our career, so say the last 20 to 30 years, has been very much kind of the same thing. But prior to that, it was much different. You had the industrial... You had farming, agriculture, you had the industrial revolution that you had, like, this office work that was not computer-based work, but it was very manual, paper-based, and lots of inefficiencies with that, but just a different way of working. And then, we've gotten to the current model, where it's a laptop, and a phone, and a desk, and that's the work. And I just think that that's not gonna be the work in the future. Knowledge work, I think, still happens, but the way that we interact with each other, the way that we interact with technology and the work, the actual work that we're doing is going to be just fundamentally different. But I think importantly, in my vision of the future, it's going to exist. And that's what I'm mostly excited about is I am highly confident that people are... That the work that we do in the future is gonna be, A, continue to exist, not being replaced, but thinking about technology as a tool, an amplification of our own abilities. And it just means that as our own abilities continue to increase our capabilities, and our capabilities to create ever more impactful outputs is just inevitable. Like, the ability for a single person to generate, like, more and more productivity and just more benefit and more just goodness in the world is all... Just, that's what it means. And, like, this is what happens when you give people tools that expand their capabilities. We just expand the pie. And I really believe in that scenario. The only thing that is challenging to that is, A, the unknown. It's hard when you say, like, your job isn't going to exist as you know it in the next couple of years. If you say that, it's like, wow, that's pretty scary. And I don't know how to get around that, how that's scary, but I can just... I have a deep sense that while that's true, it also means that the next thing, like the next set of opportunities that we're not defining yet are out there. It just, it doesn't stop. We haven't achieved peak technology. We haven't achieved peak work models. Everything gets to evolve and it continues to evolve forever. And so, I'm very excited about that. And I just hope that all of the... For all the goodness that we're going to enable is that we don't get like the negative side of this, where it's the misuse of the technology to a point that really sets us back. Because like every technology, it's possible. Like, you can draw the lines to how this technology gets misused and really, really cause problems. But I think that the greater arc here is that we're gonna see a positive future and it's gonna be enabled by this technology.
- Yep. I really want to talk about Access Insights and what you're doing now, but before that, something you touched upon there, and Joe and I have talked about this multiple times. Right now, over the past couple of years, there's a lot of individuals that have either been working in the accessibility arena, maybe in the quality space doing accessibility testing, and/or maybe some companies deprioritizing accessibility. And so there may have a lot of individuals out there within accessibility skills that are potentially looking for work. Any advice to them at all, Darryl, or any thoughts there?
- This may actually be the segue to the Access Insights discussion as well, but I think one thing... While the specific ways that we do work certainly going to change, and that like if you're thinking about accessibility in terms of any role that you're playing to try to make an interface more accessible to more people, a lot of the nature of that work, I think, is gonna be just fundamentally different or potentially automated. So, there's sort of a... Like, that doesn't necessarily sound like a great... State of the future, but I think the important... Like, so it goes back to sort of thinking more abstractly. Even if like the actual work that you do today may be either automated or less relevant in the future, the idea that you're bridging a gap between how people interact with each other and how people interact with the technology that they have access to, like to make that interaction better, to remove a barrier, to make it something more efficient, to make something more, to give somebody more capability, that is not gonna go away. And so, I think we have to... Like, people who are doing accessibility are really in the business of connecting people with technology. And to the extent that we have people in the world and the extent that we have technology in the world, that intersection is always gonna be... There's gonna be plenty of work to do at that point.
- Yeah, so the need will always be there, but how that need is addressed may be slightly different. Yep.
- Now, I have, like, a really dumb question for you. You worked at Intel for quite a while. I think people have a really good understanding when you say that you work at a software company. And maybe like if you work at a robotics company, people understand that you're building robots. But when you work for a chip manufacturer, what is... I know it wasn't necessarily your job, but there's probably thousands of people that were working on the chips. What does that mean? You can't even, as a human, see most of the machinery inside there. Can you give some kind of insight into: What do people do there?
- There's so much... Oh, man, that's a podcast. So, a couple of different ways to answer that. I think first of all, to be a chip maker, you also have to build everything around the chip. And so even though you look at Intel as a chip maker, they also literally build everything else. Like, Intel, when I started Intel, they were a major manufacturer of motherboards. All of the different... Like, everything that goes into making a computer work, they build. And they build reference models, so that way, another someone who wants to sell a computer, like a Dell, or a HP, or Lenovo, they don't just get the raw chip necessarily. They get the chip in the context of a computer to then... So then they have to do less design work to make the product and sell it, sell the product they want to their market. So, it is a much more holistic thing. And I think probably what's very surprising to a lot of people is that the amount of software that is actually created at a chip manufacturer, Intel employs tens of thousands of software engineers, probably more software engineers at Intel than at most software companies. Not the major ones, but many of them. And software, from UI all the way down the stack, all the middle layers, the firmware, and then you get down to software that you use to design chips, Verilog and the like, that is the actual recipe for creating the circuits and the designs that then eventually get... That make their way onto a silicon wafer.
- Mm-hmm.
- And the thing that's amazing to me about that, and which I still, to this day, I just... I really can't fathom the spectrum of wonder that this all is because those designs are so, as you alluded to, are so small, like they're far from being able to be seen by a human eye. Like, it's so tiny. Like, building something at that scale of... That small scale, to me, is amazing. But then to be able to do that and produce millions, and millions, and millions of volume manufacturing of things that you can't see and actually having them work. And not only does it work, but the teams that were required to build that, from the idea to the finished product coming out of the plant is hundreds to thousands of people all around the world that have to come together and figure out all of those pieces, and all the different handoffs along the way. It is, to me, I still don't understand, actually, how it's successful. Like, I could talk about each one of those steps, and thinking, seeing how the sausage is made, and it is remarkable that it gets done. It is so complicated, but here we are, it does get done. And it's a pretty amazing feat.
- Going on, love to talk about what you're doing now, Darryl, and Access Insights. For our listeners, would you mind just sharing what it is and what you do?
- Sure, yeah, so I as I left Intel at the end of 2024, and I felt like I... Basically, my feeling was that I was in a position where I still want to make a significant contribution to the world of, I'll call it accessibility, but really disability inclusion, making sure that we are still addressing and prioritizing the solution to barriers that exist today. And these mostly are digital, but also physical barriers as well. And I felt like if I put my mind to that, I can make a bigger difference from a perspective outside of Intel than inside of Intel. And really, I mean, like that's still to be... That story is still to be written. I was very happy with the role at Intel and the ability to reach a global... Be globally impactful, but there's a lot of challenges working in a large organization that isn't explicitly dedicated to that cause in terms of the internal prioritization of work and having to continuously reeducate decision-makers. And like all this work, this effort that I was putting into that the enabling of the work versus the work itself, I wanted to step out of that and be more directly, like more of my time directly involved in this, in creating the solutions. So Access Insights is a... Think of it as a research and design agency to say. Essentially, it's a capability that is basically focused on a disability perspective, but bringing that into a solution and product design across all facets. And so, it's for everything from ideation to design, to that iterative process of like a co-design model into testing and is-
- From a consulting... From a consulting perspective, Darryl, or...
- No, from more from a peer research and design perspective. So, we're bringing together or developing research panels of people with disabilities that we can bring to bear on specific problems and create solutions, or sort of identify solutions and then be a part of the design, and importantly, the scale out distribution of solutions. I'm trying to take the learnings that I had from a lot of the engagements that I had at Intel and where I saw there were challenges. So, on one side, like on the input side, I saw a lot of challenges around the idea that... Around the motivation of innovators to solve for... To address barriers and solve for disability-specific use cases, where you either have a disability or maybe a family member or a friend has a disability, and you have a skillset, and you say, "I can solve for that." And then you go and do that, and then all of a sudden, you think, "Well, this could be a product, this could be a business." And so often, that's actually a bigger leap than people understand. To understand what a market looks like and how to successfully turn an idea and a prototype into a product that has everything that's needed to work at scale for the population that you're intending it, intending it for, is a completely different skillset than the innovation that went into the idea.
- Yep.
- And I feel like I can bring a lot of that understanding and capability into that pipeline. And especially when it comes to the backend, where you say, "Okay, now we have a great idea, and this is vetted." Like, people really love this concept. Who do you partner with?
- Yeah.
- And how do you... To get to scale. Who has the distribution channels, and how do we make that work? So, that's kind of where we're kind of end to end, looking to solve the meatiest accessibility and disability-specific barriers.
- I love that because I know firsthand, like, I was at Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines for seven years, and then I did my own startup with two partners. And only then, because we had a concept, we had a product we wanted to go to market with, but once we started it, only then did I realize how much I didn't know and that gap between product ideation and actually getting it to market. So, fully understand where you're coming from. And I do believe there's a need there, especially in the accessibility arena, yep.
- Darryl, our conversations, it feels like we just got started. We could chat for hours longer and there's so much more that I would love to hear from you, but unfortunately we're kind of out of time here. So, I would love if you could just share some... The final thoughts of what you would like our audience to hear, and how people can reach out to you and who you would like to reach out to or have reach out to you.
- Yeah, so I think final thoughts would be just that it's my deep feeling that everything that we're seeing, the progression of, we'll call it AI, but technology advancement in general, meaning like all the things that... The existence of AI, as we know it today, and as we know how it is advancing, everything that's going to enable is very much net positive for the world. And in order for that to be true, we have to shape it. Instead of being on the sidelines and having an opinion about it, it's important to get into the mix and shape it. If you want it to be a positive world, let's go create that positive world. It gets me out of bed in the morning. I am very excited about this and the potential for everyone, but in particular, everyone across that's living in that spectrum of disability who experience barriers. No better time to be living. This is a time to be able to help ourselves and work with each other to just make better experiences. So, I'm very excited about that. And folks who are sharing that... Those feelings, would love to continue the ideation around that. But even folks that are thinking about this, and listening, and finding all the holes, love to have those conversations as well because I mean, that's... I think that's how you grow in terms of coming up with the right direction. In order to get in touch with me, probably the best way is LinkedIn. You can just search for me. And I'm not too active on social media because I find I'm spending more time in the space of doing things versus consuming things, which is just more of a personal choice that I'm trying to get better at. Yeah, I think that's the key. If folks want to connect, and if Access Insight sounds interesting, and you have ideas for things that we might be interested in collaborating with, certainly reach out for that as well. Happy to talk.
- Awesome, we will leave links to all of that as well in the description. Thank you so much, Darryl.
- It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for the opportunity.