Our Mission
At iAccess Innovations, we have developed and released a lifestyle application that will allow its users to rate and review locations they visit based on their accessibility. Users will be able to rate places like restaurants, stores and hotels based on the accessibility of the parking, entrance, interior space and bathrooms. We plan to build strategic partnerships with booking agencies and exciting brands to empower our community to seek new adventures, stress-free. Prospective versions of the application will expand to other forms of disabilities like vision impairments, hearing impairments and autism and allow our users to interact and keep up with their friends, through a social feed.
We want to establish a family of loyal users that curate and consume quality information from a trusted source. The ultimate goal of iAccess Life is to develop a platform that will assist in shining a light on accessibility flaws.
Our Story
Founder Brandon Winfield
In 2008, Brandon Winfield (he/him) was injured in a motocross accident that left him with a thoracic spinal cord injury (paralyzed from the waist down). Only 14 years old at the time, he was faced with the decision to either let this dramatic event stop him from truly living the life he wanted or to turn it into an opportunity to triumph in the face of tragedy – Brandon chose the latter. He continued his love for racing in the form of four wheels, entered sprint kart racing, and won numerous events across the country. As he traveled, he realized that although some places he visited were compliant according to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), many areas were grandfathered in and never forced to retrofit to accommodate the mobility impaired.
These experiences sparked the idea for iAccess, a mobile app that would allow people with disabilities to rate and review the accessibility of venues such as restaurants, lounges, clubs, and bars. Through his start-up, Brandon, and his co-founder Sayeed Mehrjerdian, aims to empower users to “know before they go” and feel confident making plans with their friends, colleagues, and loved ones.
Since the app’s launch on iOS and Android platforms in April 2019, they have amassed over 3000 unique locations rated in over 45 states and 25 countries. Their work has been featured in numerous media outlets, including CNN, CBS, Hypepotamus, AccessibleGO, SpinalCord.com, the Andrew Deitsch Podcast, VoyageATL, Atlanta Tech Edge, and Abilities.com. In addition to being an SXSW Social and Culture Alternate Pitch Finalist, the team has participated in the Ascend Atlanta program and NPR’s How I Built This Fellowship. In February 2020, they were selected to join the incoming class of Atlanta Tech Village’s #ItTakesAVillage accelerator program.
Outside of this work, Brandon has served on numerous panels highlighting the importance of accessibility. Most recently, he’s partnered with various Atlanta organizations to help launch Operation Bus Stop Census for Transit Equity Day, an initiative championing safe and reliable public transit for everyone.
Founder Sayeed Mehrjerdian
In early 2015, Sayeed came across a post on social media about Brandon and the mobile app he was working. This app would allow people with mobility impairments to rate places on how accessible they were. He reached out to Brandon’s sister, whom he had gone to school with and told her to let him know if he needed some help navigating the technology and development side of the endeavor that he would love to be involved.
In his profession as a product manager and product owner, his job is to gather technical requirements, identify and investigate the viability of third party API’s as a data resource, weigh in on interface and design questions, and ensure that the product being delivered meets the expectations of the user. He felt that is experience in that field lent itself perfectly to what Brandon was doing and where he was going with iAccess Life. Brandon and Sayeed quickly realized that they compliment each other well and that they had a lot in common as far as personal interests and professional drive so they decided to enter a formal co-founder relationship. They have gone through a long journey of learning and growing and feel like they are finally in a place to bring this project to fruition.
Sayeed is the son of immigrants from the Middle East and South America and his multi-cultural upbringing has exposed him to many cultures and countries throughout his travels to over 20 different counties around the world. Sayeed is an Atlanta native, a Georgia Tech graduate of the school of Industrial and Systems Engineering, a live music enthusiast and an avid sports fan, where he is especially fond of Soccer and supports the Arsenal and Atlanta United football clubs.