On the TechTO stage ×2
Demo of the Month: eSSENTIAL Accessibility
Watch on YouTube ↗Founder Fridays: Building eSSENTIAL Accessibility
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2017. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Simon ↗
In their words
When you talk about disability people tend to think it's a little tiny group of people. That's not true — one in five individuals self-identifies as having a disability.
When we saw this opportunity to be a disseminator of technology, to come up with a better business model, to put Stephen Hawking-type technology and democratize it, pluralize it, so that everybody can get access to it — that was the fundamental genesis of the concept.
Being in Toronto was very helpful to us, because you have a concentrated head office network. Everyone's in Toronto. And you had big companies, but they weren't too big.
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Quick answers
Who is Simon Dermer?
Co-founder and long-time CEO of eSSENTIAL Accessibility, the Toronto digital-accessibility company he started with Spiro Papathanasakis. He became executive chairman before the 2022 merger with Level Access, where he is now a co-founder and board observer.
How did eSSENTIAL Accessibility start?
Dermer and Papathanasakis met working for a large North American long-term care provider and owned small healthcare businesses together. Seeing what people with acquired disabilities needed to use a computer, they set out to democratize assistive technology rather than sell one bespoke rig at a time.
What is the TechTO connection?
He demoed the product on the FintechTO stage in June 2017 alongside his co-founder, and returned for a Founder Fridays interview in July 2022.