VASLA: Accessible Education Marketplace

Disabled people and by extension, deaf people, experience massive disparities in all areas of life - education, language, socio-emotional aspects, and basic life functions. A large part of this is because disabled, and deaf people, are shut out of education in many ways, especially when it comes to educational resources. 

Currently, disabled students make up 1/6th of the worldwide student population, with as many as 34 million deaf children today in school systems. However, out of those 34 million deaf children, only 2% are able to access an education in their native language - sign language. 

In deaf people, this lack of access to educational resources results in high rates of language deprivation, high unemployment rates, low college completion rates, disparities in socioeconomic status, and an overall lack of opportunity. 

A large part of this problem has to do with a lack of educational resources specifically designed for disabled students and specifically designed for deaf students. Special education teachers have to spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours, specifically on making education resources accessible and inclusive for their students, on top of all of the other obligations that they need to do, e.g., Individualized Education Plans, Section 504 Plans, etc. 

Currently, there is no place or resource that teachers, schools, programs, or even disabled students themselves can access that is designed specifically for their needs. 

Our solution is to create a deaf-led and deaf-built education marketplace specifically designed for deaf students. This marketplace will include curriculum, content in the native language of students, lesson plans, study tools, assignments, and much more. By providing a genuinely accessible marketplace for various resources and content, we can help close the educational disparities between able-bodied people and deaf people. 

This marketplace will also have add-on or supplemental services as needed, such as tutoring, consulting, administrative resources, and various types of courses. These courses include self-guided and instructor-guided courses on various topics, from ACT preparation to teacher licensure exam preparation courses to independent living skills courses. 

This education marketplace uses a similar technology to Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers, where verified creators and in-house creators will create a range of truly accessible content to be sold on the marketplace. There will be a few different portals for customers to access these resources - a students/family portal, a teacher portal, and an institutional portal. All content will be required to be accessible, and by creating a marketplace that creators can contribute and then benefit from, we can multiply our impact significantly beyond just what our team can do. 

We will provide a toolkit currently under development that creators can use to have a range of generative Artificial Intelligence plug-ins that include items such as sign language avatars and game-based learning to best engage deaf students. By using genAI toolkits to power accessible educational resources, we can create specialized and individualized educational resources, content, curriculum, and much more to meet any needs that students have. 

Our current target population is deaf students. Deaf students, as a function of their disability, need meaningful access to language, otherwise they run the risk of language deprivation which causes irreparable harm to neurological development. Our solution provides resources and tools to deaf students in their native language, as well as provides families, teachers, and schools with the resources they need to meaningfully support language development of deaf children of all ages. 

As a result, creating and expanding access to educational tools and resources, we can stop the deleterious impacts of language deprivation that lead to life-long disparities in employment, education, and independent living. 

For this reason, the impact of building a large central marketplace for truly accessible and meaningful educational resources cannot be understated. Deaf people will be able to finally participate in basic life functions - employment, education, socio-emotional growth, and the pursuit of happiness. As a result, we will see meaningful gains not only in the quality of life of deaf people, but also in terms of social and political impacts of deaf people. They will be empowered to be full and active participants in all aspects of life, more able to navigate their daily lives. What's more, from an institutional and governmental perspective, there will be massive cost-savings in the long run - less deaf people will need to rely on welfare systems and will be more independent due to better educational attainment. 

Also - a large number of deaf students worldwide are often placed in mainstream environments, where the only deaf person they know is themselves. Research shows that deaf children are more likely to succeed if they are able to interact with deaf role models, and interact with education in their native language. By creating resources, tools, and content that range from resources for teachers to 1 on 1 tutoring with a deaf tutor, we can ensure that deaf students get all of the tools and resources they need to achieve their fullest potential. 

One important thing of note about our commitment to being deaf-owned and deaf-led means that we commit to inclusion - all of our leadership, tutors, and creators are deaf. Not only does our solution address educational inequality, it also addresses employment inequality by hiring deaf people. 

My team is all deaf and has a wide range of educational experiences and backgrounds. We are passionate about improving the educational system and, consequently, outcomes for deaf people worldwide, as we know what it is like to be shut out of educational opportunities.  Most of us experienced being one of just a few deaf children in our schools growing up and had to work very hard to succeed in our respective fields.

We are in phase 1 of our plans to serve deaf students, but we are currently working to expand phase 1 and are actively building our marketplace for phase 2. We classify this as a pilot as we slowly build our complete solution via an iterative process. However, it could be classified as our growth phase as we are doubling our revenues yearly. 

Phase 1: Tutoring and Classes for Deaf Students

We provide a wide range of tutoring and related resources to deaf students in all contexts and settings, from the K-12 environment to the college setting and employment training. We currently work with a range of clients, from families getting tutoring for their deaf child, to community colleges for their deaf students, to state Vocational Rehabilitation agencies to support their deaf clients in everything from tutoring for Commercial Drivers License exams to English as a Second Language tutoring. 

Phase 2: Deaf Education Resources Marketplace 

In phase 2, we will launch our under-development marketplace specifically for deaf education, starting with common core subjects. This marketplace will be a truly accessible place for creators to develop, distribute, and share content for educators, within our niche. From there, we will use what we learned to refine our marketplace and build out our toolkit for our creators. 

Phase 3: genAI Toolkit for Education Resource Development

In phase 3, we will build genAI tools for our creators to convert their content to game-based learning and to implement signing avatars to create courses more quickly and cut costs (e.g., sign language translation costs and actors).

Our biggest barriers are in two areas, as follows. We believe that Solve will be able to help us address these challenges and break through in order to meet the educational needs of deaf children. 

1. Financial Barriers: We are having difficulty finding investors, financing, and related support to help us expand and reach our goals, especially in this ultra-competitive time in the EdTech and genAI space - our deaf voices get drowned out pretty quickly! Also, part of the challenge of these financial barriers is also associated with accessibility and cultural barriers, where sign language interpreters cost over $150 for just one hour meetings, multiplied by a few prospective investors per week, and the costs add up extremely quickly. We're also 100% bootstrapped, meaning our access to capital is limited. 

2. Cultural and Accessibility Barriers: Most people do not understand the problems we are addressing. Our presence is oxymoronic - we are educated, well-versed in our respective fields, so to audiences that are not deaf, the problems we are describing are seemingly mythological. Also, these audiences often do not understand the communication barriers that deaf founders experience. Deaf people are often shut out of informal conversations, networking, and basic access to entrepreneurial spaces as well as resources. We spend a lot of time educating hearing people about deaf people, as well as managing our own accommodations simply to have the same access that hearing people have.

Our solution centers disability justice and accessibility first and foremost, which is the foundation of everything we do. From there, we integrate genAI tools to make our education tech solution happen. By creating accessible, high-quality education resources cheaper and faster than the competition, we can not only ensure equitable access to education, but we can also improve educational outcomes for deaf children worldwide.  

There is nobody else out there doing what we are doing as a company. By contracting with institutional partners to provide our services, we are ensuring deaf people furthest from educational justice are able to receive our services for free or low cost.

Our theory of change is simple - improved educational resources and improved access to education results in better life-long outcomes for disabled people. Resources that are designed for disabled people from the outset means that disabled people are more likely to succeed in the classroom, and later on in life. 

Specific to deaf people, creating high quality educational resources to be used inside and outside the classroom for all grades means that we can close achievement gaps between deaf and hearing individuals. We can also meaningfully address language deprivation in deaf children, which is a leading cause of why deaf adults do not succeed in employment or education in their lives. To provide some context, less than 2% of the 34 million deaf children worldwide receive an education in their sign language. By providing additional resources and tools that are in the native language of these deaf children, we can address this inequality. 

We are providing resources that are language-rich and easily accessible to deaf people when nobody has before. If they have, they have been paltry and piece-meal fixes for individual situations, not strategic and wide-reaching. In this way, we can meaningfully close educational gaps and achievement gaps across the entire continuum for deaf people.

Our solution will have a transformative impact - we already have had an impact across a few states in the US. One deaf person was able to get their commercial drivers license as a result of our tutoring, and two more were able to pass their standard drivers license exams. In other areas, we've tutored deaf students who are learning English as a Second Language, and a number of deaf students in math classes. 

Not only will we expand our tutoring services, we will also create a genAI toolkit that will power an accessible education resources marketplace, creating an entire ecosystem. 

According to Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goal, which is to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,' our solution addresses this in its entirety, by focusing on one of the most marginalized groups: disabled children. 

More specifically, 1 in 5 children worldwide have a disability, and according to Target 4.5, which ensures access to quality education for the vulnerable which includes disabled children, we would be serving a large proportion of this global population once our marketplace launches. 

Our impact goals are straightforward: 

• Outputs (e.g., types and variations of tutoring services provided; hours of tutoring provided; contracts entered into with institutions)

• Outcomes (e.g., grades, academic performance, confidence in the classroom, exam scores, overall academic outcomes for our clients including college attainment rates, etc)

• Metrics on usage (e.g., number of hours of tutoring services provided, number of times a video was viewed, number of times a curriculum kit was downloaded)

We focus on our outputs and our outcomes along with our metrics to give us a broader picture of how our clients interface with our solution, and how our clients progress as a result of our services. 

Specific to the outcomes and metrics, for the marketplace, we will work closely with our future partners (including school districts, programs, and state rehabilitation agencies) to also collect performance data on students to determine the effectiveness and efficacy of our solutions. 

Tutoring platform: 

• We utilize a number of third-party tools as well as a custom-built scheduling tool using Next.js, Supabase, and Netlify. In setting up our tutoring platform, our goal is to find a balance between a custom-built solution that meets our unique needs, while also using existing off the shelf solutions to minimize our development costs. 

Marketplace platform: 

• We will use a range of existing tools to build out our marketplace platform including Wordpress and plugins such as LifterLMS and WooCommerce. The marketplace infrastructure itself will not require significant development or resources, but the content for the marketplace will. For this reason, we plan to build a set of resources to attract an initial pool of subscribers, then bring in content creators who will create resources for us for their own revenue generating purposes, using our platform. 

GenAI tools: 

• We are closely tracking advancements in the field of sign language recognition and generation. Several companies are making rapid progress, and we are excited about the potential to integrate their technologies into our offerings. We plan to enhance our educational resources and game-based learning experiences by using these companies’ services via an API or through partnerships or acquisitions.

Research shows that role models accessed via tutors, tutoring, game-based learning, and improved educational resources improves outcomes for deaf students. Also, bilingualism for deaf children, which our solution promotes, is proven to be more effective and more efficient than monolingual education. 

Cawthon, S. W., Johnson, P. M., Garberoglio, C. L., & Schoffstall, S. J. (2016). Role models as facilitators of social capital for deaf individuals: A research synthesis. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(2), 115-127.

Parks, E. S., & Calderón, J. (2022). Bimodal multilingual education: recognizing the linguistic resources of a diverse deaf world. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25(7), 2699–2710.

Kamnardsiri, T., Hongsit, L. O., Khuwuthyakorn, P., & Wongta, N. (2017). The Effectiveness of the Game‑Based Learning System for the Improvement of American Sign Language using Kinect. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 15(4), pp283-296.

Kenney, P. C. (2018). Deaf peer tutors and deaf tutees as pairs in a college writing center. University of Rochester.

Full-time staff: 4

Part-time staff: 6 (5 tutors, 1 marketing & outreach person)

3 years, we started in 2021. 

Our leadership values diversity, inclusion, equity, and disability justice. This is centered in our work, strategy, and philosophy when delivering services and resources to our clients. 

Our tutors vary in ethnicities, upbringings, backgrounds, and language use and are members of the community that we serve. 

My team and I are deaf and have various educational experiences and backgrounds. We are passionate about improving the educational system and, consequently, outcomes for deaf people worldwide, as we know what it is like to be shut out of educational opportunities.  Most of us experienced being one of just a few deaf children in our schools growing up and had to work very hard to succeed. 

Sean Maiwald (myself) - Cofounder, I am a deaf university professor at Gallaudet University, teaching deaf students every day, and I have a background in public policy and entrepreneurship, previously establishing a start-up that obtained low six figures in investment before being shut as a result of COVID. I also research education policy in the United States. In my work, I see that deaf students are unprepared for college and the work world, largely because of a lack of access, even in the United States, sparking my passion for this work. 

Thadeus Brown - Thadeus is deaf and the person who came up with the idea for this business during COVID, when classrooms were virtual. When redesigning his classrooms for distance learning, he realized that there was a lack of accessible resources but that virtual tools have the power to address this lack of accessible resources. Thadeus teaches deaf children, working in the Seattle public school systems, the Wisconsin School for the Deaf, and the Iowa School for the Deaf. Thadeus is also a graduate student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). 

David Uzzell - David is deaf, a co-founder with extensive experience in business operations and business development, and someone passionate about education justice for deaf children. Through hard work, he attended public schools in the Chicago area and became the most decorated Academic Bowl contestant in history. (Academic Bowl is a competition designed to support deaf high school students in academic subjects and topics and promote intellectual pursuits in deaf youth.) David has also worked for several Michelin-starred establishments during his first career as a chef, bringing his considerable work ethic to the team. 

Brienna Herold - Brienna is a deaf co-founder with an extensive technical background in data science and software engineering. She boasts a thorough educational background from a BS in Biology to an MS in Information Science and Technologies to a PhD in Computer Science. She has also worked for the United Nations on data projects, giving her a global perspective. 

Gabby Humlicek - Gabby is a deaf employee with an extensive background in vocational rehabilitation (VR) and education. She holds a Master's degree in VR, giving us unique experience, knowledge, and expertise in this area, where many of our tutoring clients are.

Our organizational structure and business model are designed to be self-sustaining. To provide equitable educational resources, we focus on contracting with institutional entities receiving funding from federal and state governments directed toward deaf people and through working directly with families and schools. We provide services that fulfill missing gaps in these institutions’ deliverables, thus becoming essential to their operations, leading to renewed contracts year after year. Regarding K-12 deaf students, we can provide services tailored to individual IEP needs not provided by the school district. Future revenues will come from teachers and educators who utilize our marketplace to find, access, and use educational resources in the school setting.

We are already financially sustainable for the tutoring aspect in terms of profit, but in order to reach our broader goals of truly transforming education, we need additional resources (staff, money, time). For context, we’ve doubled our revenue and profit margins for three years in a row, but are still a small company! We also can be far more efficient and effective if and when newer processes and technologies are implemented, which are currently underway. We would also be significantly more profitable. However, the timeline is longer than what we would prefer, which can be accelerated with additional resources.