Atlanta App iAccess Helps Users Rate and Review Venues’ Accessibility

When Brandon Winfield was a teen in California, he and his friends were obsessed with motocross racing—to the point that one of Winfield’s first words was motorcycle.

All he ever wanted to do was become a professional motocross racer. He even made it so far as to sign with Honda as an amateur racer. But those dreams came to a screeching halt when Winfield was severely injured during a race.

“I ended up getting hurt. I actually crashed right in front of my mom,” he said.

At 14 years old, Winfield was paralyzed from the chest down as a result of his injury. But as he likes to say, “Where you find tragedy, you can also find triumph.”

“Luckily for me, I knew the risk of what I was doing. It wasn’t the first time I had gotten hurt doing motocross,” he said. “I didn’t want it to slow me down. I wanted things to be as normal as possible.”

A guy like Winfield isn’t ever going to slow down. Pretty soon, he was trying to race go-carts, riding jet skis and competing in different races. As he continued to travel and compete, Winfield started to notice a pattern of inaccessibility for amenities at venues—in bathrooms, at entrances and more—for those who aren’t able-bodied.

“I wondered why I’d have to show up to a place just to figure out the bathroom wasn’t accessible,” he said. “Whether it was a stall or just the door in general, I couldn’t get into it.”

When Winfield attended a church service with his mother on New Year’s Eve a few years ago, the idea for his startup really started to come together. The service’s main message for the congregation that night: Ask how you can benefit the community, rather than focusing only on bettering yourself.

“I just had this idea pop into my head that I needed to create a mobile application that would allow me to rate and review a venue’s accessibility,” he said. “I had no business background. I had no app development background. All I ever knew was motocross, and that’s the only thing I wanted to do, so I didn’t have a dream college I wanted to go to. I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do … I just decided this was something I wanted to do and I was going to figure it out.”

Winfield began collaborating with people his father knew, having worked in the IoT world, but later branched out on his own when they failed to see his vision. After securing investments from family and friends, he connected with an a company called RH Consulting in Romania that could develop his application, then known as ParaPerks, for Android and iOS.

But the company couldn’t deliver on its promises.

“We’re just not getting anything back and I’m starting to wonder what’s going on,” he said. “Finally we got an Android version of the app … open it up and it’s nowhere near complete.”

Winfield ended up having to cut ties with the company.

“That ended up being a low point in my life, where I’m trying to figure out everything again but I thought I was really close to having this developed,” he said. “I had the rug pulled out from under me.”

Winfield’s adviser, who still works with him today, introduced him to KiwiTech, a mobile app development company in India, New York City and Washington, D.C. KiwiTech representatives were in Atlanta, trying to expand their presence in the local ecosystem, when Winfield pitched his idea to them at the Atlanta Tech Village.

“Our meeting was supposed to be an hour, we went over past their next meeting—we talked for two hours about everything,” Winfield said. “They decided they wanted to work with us.”

The deal with KiwiTech was to match their investment and development dollar by dollar, Winfield said. But finally, his hard work paid off. iAccess, his accessibility app, launched in April.

“We have 2,300 unique locations in over 40 states and 20 countries already,” he said. “We were able to raise $115,000 from family and friends to do development. Now, we’re currently building prospects for our seed round, and we’re trying to raise about about $500,000 to 750,000 so we can take the next step and have location development (and) everything else that comes along with building a startup.”

In August, iAccess had close to 1,000 users. Earlier this year, the startup won the Social & Culture award at the SXSW Accelerator Pitch competition.

“The rest of the year, we will be raising new funds, hopefully in the next 60 to 90 days,” he said. There are also plans to bring Winfield’s business partner on full-time and start working on a second version of the app.

Originally published in Atlanta Innocences by Madison Hogan on September 24, 2019