Q&A
Howe Innovation Center community profile: Alex Dunn
Alex Dunn's AI-powered accessibility platform, Cephable, is helping to create a more inclusive world for people with disabilities.
Innovation – especially in DisabilityTech – takes community, collaboration and communication. The Howe Innovation Center is working hard to connect and convene the folks who are out there helping us ignite the spark of change in creating a more accessible world.
Alex Dunn has been in the Perkins ecosystem for the past 7 years. He’d done some consulting with the BlindWays app, but learned more about the Howe Innovation Center from Executive Director Sandy Lacey through the Remarkable Tech accelerator, part of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation.
His company also collaborated on “Defining DisabilityTech: The Rise of Inclusive Innovation,” a Howe Innovation Center white paper that explores the challenges faced by people with disabilities – including the “disability tax” that comes with inaccessibility, where the price of access is so often put on the individual.
Get to know more about Alex in this community profile:
Tell us about yourself.
I’m the Founder and CEO of Cephable, the AI-powered accessibility platform that empowers people to control their technology on their terms with things like adaptive voice controls, face expressions, head movement, virtual buttons, automation, and more.
I’m also a board member for Voicify, a voice assistant SaaS platform, and a board member for Rescue Allies who consults in the animal rescue space and runs animal food pantries to help families keep their pets in their loving homes.
Is there anything you’ve learned about DisabilityTech in the past year that’s surprised you?
The biggest thing I’ve learned about DisabilityTech is how much innovation actually comes out of the space and becomes mainstream adopted technology, or at the very least, majorly influences mainstream technology.
To name a few: capacitive touch screens that drive our phones, tablets, and more; non-invasive hearing-aid design that influenced the modern wireless earbuds we use today; closed captioning being adopted by a majority of millennial and Gen-Z Netflix viewers.
It shows and confirms that when you build for everyone and actually aim to solve human problems with solutions, you’ll find yourself creating something desired by so many more.
What’s the last book you read?
The most recent book I read was The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian, which explores the history and continued challenges faced by applying machine learning principles to human problems and what we’ve seen through history (and continue to see) where the science, math, and applications do not always align with real human values. It leaves room to personally explore the implications of these challenges to yourself as an individual and to the world at scale as someone working on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
What do you like to do for fun?
My main hobbies outside of personal research and development are playing guitar, producing music, and gaming. I have a small little studio/lab in my basement where I do all three of those things in one space, which makes it one of my happy places to explore my creativity.
If you had to eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?
If I said anything other than my Chipotle burrito order, my friends, family, and colleagues reading this would likely call me out… so it would have to be that.
What would you say to someone curious about volunteering with Howe?
There’s an incredible community out there of people innovating in the DisabilityTech space and those looking to get started on their innovation journey. If you’re looking to meet more folks in this space, share resources, ideas, connections, and more then it’s the place to be and to connect with!
Anything else you’d like to share with the Howe community?
We would love to invite you to try the Cephable platform and join our growing community of users! You can download the app on Windows and MacOS as well as the companion mobile app on iOS and Android, generate control profiles with our AI, and try out the many ways you can interact with your digital world in more productive and accessible ways.
It’s entirely free for individuals: we’re just looking for more feedback to continue to make it the best platform it can be, so join us in creating a more accessible and personalized way to interact with technology. Download and learn more or jump right to the download and community links.
Want to learn more about the Howe Innovation Center – including how to join our community of folks committed to creating a more accessible world? Visit us at Perkins.org/Innovation.
Stay in the conversation
Innovation can’t happen without all of us. Together, we can solve real accessibility problems.
If you want more from-the-front-lines perspective on what’s happening across the DisabilityTech market, join the Howe Innovation Center community. You’ll get members-only access to resources and insight that’s not available anywhere else, including our white paper, Defining DisabilityTech: The Rise of Inclusive Innovation.
