Innovation shaped by lived experience.
Access Insights connects technology creators with communities of people with disabilities and older adults, turning lived experience into insight that leads to better products, stronger adoption, and larger markets.
Our Purpose
Lived experience is one of the most powerful sources of innovation.
Technology shapes how people live, work, and participate in society.
Yet the people who navigate the most complex environments, adapting technology every day to meet their needs, are rarely involved in designing it.
At Access Insights, we believe people with disabilities and older adults should be included as collaborators from the beginning, because their lived experience reveals opportunities, friction points, and design insights that traditional product development often misses.
When these communities help shape what gets built, products become more intuitive, more resilient, and more valuable to a broader market.
Our purpose is to bring innovators and communities together so the next generation of technology works better in the real world.
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1.3 billion people globally live with a significant disability.
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16 percent of the world's population are people with disabilities, the largest minority group.
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13 trillion dollars in spending power is held by people with disabilities and their networks.
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70 percent of assistive technologies are abandoned within the first year of use.
How We Work
Every engagement places people with disabilities and older adults at the center of the process as active collaborators who shape what gets built and how.
Our Living Labs model embeds research directly within real community environments. Instead of relying on hypothetical scenarios or controlled lab settings, product teams engage with people in the context of their everyday lives, where routines, constraints, and workarounds naturally occur.
Clients work alongside participants and researchers to observe how technology is introduced, adapted, and sustained over time. This approach surfaces insights that traditional methods often miss, including how products perform beyond first use, how they fit into existing habits, and where friction prevents adoption.
The result is a deeper, more accurate understanding of real-world use. Teams leave with validated direction, clearer product decisions, and reduced risk as they move from concept to deployment.
What We Deliver
Access Insights equips teams with clear, actionable outputs that guide product decisions and accelerate progress.
Each engagement delivers structured research findings grounded in real-world use, including prioritized insights, documented friction points, and validated opportunities for improvement. Teams receive concrete recommendations they can act on immediately, from product direction and feature refinement to experience design and go-to-market considerations.
The value is clarity and confidence. Teams leave with evidence-backed direction that reduces uncertainty and helps ensure what gets built works in the environments it is intended for.
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Lived Experience Advisory
Rapid insight sessions with real participants in authentic community settings. Fast, credible direction for product teams exploring new concepts or product decisions.
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Co-Design & Usability Sprints
Multi-session programs where participants collaborate directly with product teams, validating usability and identifying friction early in development.
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Longitudinal In-Setting Pilots
Extended pilots embedded inside residential and community environments, tracking adoption and real-world integration over time.
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Annual Research Retainers
Priority Living Labs access bundled with multiple engagements across the year, designed for teams running ongoing research programs.
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R&D and Prototyping
Rapid prototyping and applied development to bring ideas into tangible form, including mockups, interactive prototypes, and software MVPs grounded in real-world insight.
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Co-Development Spaces
Opt-in community environments where participants engage directly with early concepts, shaping design direction, validating usability, and informing iteration from the start.
Our Team
Practitioners. Advocates. Builders.
Our team includes disability rights pioneers, accessibility researchers, technologists, and designers who share a belief that the most meaningful innovation begins with lived experience.
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Darryl Adams
Founder
AI and accessibility strategist focused on inclusive innovation and real world impact. Darryl helps organizations turn emerging technologies into practical solutions that improve how people live and work.
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Lex Frieden
Senior Advisor
Chief architect of the ADA and a founder of the independent living movement; five decades shaping U.S. and international disability policy.
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Richard Beckwith, PhD
Research Fellow
Long career doing research in support of design – Areas: disability, education, and aging; Technologies: UX, AI (esp. NLP), and sensing.
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Marco Beltman, PhD
Research Fellow, Sensory Technology
Principal engineer with a PhD in acoustics, 39 patents, and a volunteer raft guide opening rivers to people of all abilities.
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Becky Chierichetti
Design Research Lead
UX researcher exploring AI, mixed reality, and accessibility at the boundary of physical and digital worlds.
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Pete Denman
Design/Interaction
Design researcher who designed Stephen Hawking’s communication system. With over 30 years of experience in visual and interaction design, Pete brings the added perspective of a wheelchair user to every project.
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Susan Faulkner
Research Director
User experience researcher and leader with over 30 years of experience delivering high-impact results focused on accessibility.
The people behind the work
Seven people. One rare convergence.
Genuine expertise in accessibility is not common. Expertise at this depth — research scientists, policy architects, principal engineers, and senior UX leaders who have each spent decades at the center of the field — is rarer still. To find seven of them working in concert is nearly unheard of.
Together, the Access Insights team holds more than 60 patents, has delivered over 1,200 lectures and keynote addresses on four continents, and has authored more than 167 peer-reviewed publications. Their work shaped the laws millions rely on, the tools billions use, and the standards that define what responsible, inclusive technology looks like.
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60+
patents held across acoustic engineering, augmented reality, and AI systems
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1,200+
lectures and keynote addresses delivered — from the White House to the United Nations
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167+
peer-reviewed publications spanning disability policy, HCI, acoustics, and ethnography
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200+ yrs
of combined work that directly shaped federal disability law and global accessibility standards
Partner with us
Build technology that truly works in the real world.
If you design products for people, your work touches the lives of people with disabilities and older adults.
Working alongside these communities leads to deeper insight, stronger adoption, and more inclusive innovation.
Access Insights helps organizations build with the people their technology is meant to serve.
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon