How a Technology Platform Helps a 12 Year Old Boy Become an Entrepreneur

San Diego, CA, November 16, 2015 --(PR.com)-- At Techcrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September Emilie Baird, mother of Emmanuel, met the team at Ideator. Emilie was at the event working as a security guard. She’s an EMT and a nursing student and received her college degree 15 years ago from Stanford. She is currently making a career change from nonprofit grant writing to nursing. She is a single parent to Emmanuel and his brother, and nonprofit salaries are not compatible with single parenting.

Her son Emmanuel, who is 12 years old and blind, has had an idea for an app for some time The app would allow visually impaired people to easily order food at restaurants without having to struggle to see posted menus behind the counter. When Emmanuel and Emilie go to a restaurant, Emmanuel can currently know what’s on the menu only if the restaurant posts all of the items online (including seasonal items). The online access is useful because the phone can zoom in to read the items on his own. Most often than not, the restaurant does not have their menus online.

Blind and visually impaired people cannot easily read menus at mainstream restaurants (such as popular fast food restaurants) for many reasons. The obstacles include: 1) menus are posted behind the counter too far away to take a photo with your phone and zoom in 2) light obscures the items and magnifying solutions do not work 3) paper menus are not available or do not have all menu items with prices 5) cashiers will not read the entire menu out loud (required by law, but rarely ever done as there are so many options these days). Ultimately, there is no easy way for the visually impaired to get access to the menu items and prices.

Emmanuel and Emilie have spoken to people in the blind community about the app idea and they love it. It would mean they could order food quickly because they could look up the menu ahead of time and better manage their budget.

Emilie and her son started to work with Ideator after meeting the co-founders at TechCrunch. Ideator has created a technology platform to help entrepreneurs and startups access the tools, people and resources that they need to launch their business

Ideator is helping them accomplish their next goal to make this app a reality for the blind and visually impaired community. Together, the team at Ideator and Emilie are raising money to work on the first version of the mobile application. Ideator, Emilie and Emmanuel also believe that the mobile app can help all people who have difficulty reading menus for various reasons (including bad lighting) to better interact with restaurants and have a more enjoyable dining experience.

If you would like to help build this product, they encourage you to join as an advisor to EyeMenu on Ideator. In order to fund the project, head on over to the campaign on GoFundMe to help them finish their business plan and build the first version of the mobile app. Ideator, Emilie, Emmanuel and the visually impaired community would be grateful if you could help bring Emmanuel’s idea to life.