Lexia Solutions - Giving Everyone a Seat at the Table

What if the most powerful accessibility product in a stadium was not built into the building, but wheeled up to your seat in under a minute? Jeff Runnels, co-founder of Lexia Solutions and inventor of Uplift, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman on The Hardtech Podcast for a conversation that is equal parts personal and shrewd. Uplift is a relocatable, battery-powered lift that gives wheelchair users a real seat at the table, at a bar, in a luxury suite, or on the ground floor of a concert, without asking them to leave their chair or wait for a building to be remodeled. Jeff traces the whole arc: from being pulled out of class into the "blue group" as a kid with undiagnosed dyslexia, to a dinner-table realization about dignity and eye level, to a genuinely clever business model that makes accessibility something venues actually want to buy. What we get into: Jeff's origin: the "blue group," a Quiz Bowl gut-punch, and a dyslexia diagnosis in the tenth grade The dinner with his wife Bliss, a friendship named Hal, and the dignity of meeting someone at eye level What Uplift actually is: the ClearSight seating system, a relocatable lift that sets up in under a minute The seat math: restoring roughly 45 ground-floor seats and dispersing accessible seats into every section The legal moat: ADA equivalent facilitation (Section 103), and why nothing in the law has to change The swimming-pool-lift precedent, tier-one barriers, and why Uplift needs no construction Making accessibility pay: venue revenue, luxury suites, and accessibility as a sponsorship asset Building it safe: the multi-year UL and CSA certification journey The scars of product development: a bad shop, a second mortgage, a U-Haul, and 72 hours to a patent Why the core physics existed all along, and why this should have existed 20 years ago Chapters 0:00 Welcome & intro 0:36 Meet Jeff Runnels, Lexia Solutions & Uplift 1:14 It started in elementary school: the "blue group" 2:12 "You're dumb": the Quiz Bowl moment that stuck 3:16 The dinner with Bliss, and a friendship named Hal 4:53 A seat at the table: dignity at eye level 6:26 Uplift's vision: meet people where they are 8:45 Communal vs clinical access, and why transfer isn't the answer 11:54 What Uplift is: the ClearSight seating system and the seat math 15:49 Weaponizing capitalism to make the ADA happen 17:35 The legal moat: equivalent facilitation (ADA Section 103) 19:26 The swimming-pool-lift precedent 20:42 Tier-one barriers, and why Uplift needs no construction 22:02 Building it safe: the UL and CSA certification journey 24:06 A hard lesson: the trauma, the mortgage, and 72 hours to a patent 29:13 Why fixed-bid hardware can't be estimated (Glassboard's go-kart origin) 31:17 New mistakes, not old ones: if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen 32:31 Assistive tech for everyone: laptops, Plaud & captions 34:09 The surface area of product-market fit: accessibility helps everyone 36:04 Accessibility as a sponsorship asset 37:22 The physics existed all along: seeing the hole in the market 39:20 Programmed for this: dyslexia, grit & meaning 41:15 Advice to the "little Jeffs," and why it takes a village 43:54 Wrap-up Featuring DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard with Jeff Runnels, co-founder of Lexia Solutions. Glassboard is a hardware product development company. Subscribe for more conversations with the people building hard tech. #Accessibility #ADA #HardTech #Hardware #ProductDevelopment #Disability #Inclusion #Startups #Engineering #Uplift