Tariffs are putting accessibility innovations at risk

It's a tough time to open up your wallet.

Global tariffs, a priority for the Trump administration, are hitting certain consumer products harder than others, including electronic gadgets that are reliant on imported product parts. Laptop base prices are seeing three-figure bumps. Items like gaming consoles, vehicles, and even sexual intimacy products have seen prices fluctuating up and down as the government ebbs on its tariff promises. And less obvious industries, like Hollywood, face similar uncertainty.

Meanwhile, founders and investors are closely monitoring industry headwinds as the Trump administration's Big Beautiful Bill introduces more regulatory uncertainty for those trying to stay afloat in competitive markets. 

Organizations like the Consumer Tech Association (CTA), which facilitates a cohort of accessibility-based consumer tech companies and provides foundation grants to programs that serve seniors and people with disabilities, have been outspoken about the unintended consequences of the government's economic plan. 

"Make no mistake: American consumers, families, and workers will feel real pain," said CTA CEO and Vice Chair Gary Shapiro.

Amid a churning pricing storm, smaller companies dedicated to creating accessible tech are feeling the squeeze, already navigating a byzantine economic and regulatory reality. The plight of these companies is especially notable, since they serve one of the largest consumer populations — even people who aren't disabled in their younger years often utilize visual, hearing, or breathing aids as they age.

Higher tariffs, higher stakes

Predominantly grouped under the medtech umbrella, companies in the accessibility space are vying for medical and scientific credibility, in addition to garnering enough consumer demand for products like adaptive mobility aids, braille technologies, and other novel tools for people with disabilities.

Adaptive products — often "one of a kind" tech — are considered niche, despite their necessity for swaths of people globally. At large, assistive technologies can be in a regulatory limbo for years before they get into the hands of medical professionals and then in the hands of consumers, and insurance companies have more say than many would like. That makes succeeding in this industry more complicated and higher-risk than other tech sectors, explains Sarah Thomas, founder and CEO of accessibility consulting firm Delight x Design and an advisor in age tech — the new term for human-centered technologies designed to serve and adapt an aging population.

Compared to new laptops and gaming consoles, accessibility tools are "a need to have, not a nice to have," said Thomas. Even in a world without additional economic constraints, accessibility tools and assistive technologies are already shockingly high-priced. Power wheelchairs, for example, can range from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. Hearing aids run between $1,000 and $4,000, on average. New technologies are even steeper, and financial assistance or insurance reimbursement is never assured.

Tim Balz is a former SpaceX engineer and founder of smart seating company Kalogon. Balz has been working in the wheelchair space for 15 years and is credited as building the world's "first smart wheelchair." Kalogon is now a leader in AI-powered pressure control and adaptive and reactive seating, meant to diminish the harm of pressure injuries for wheelchair users.

Balz, who now invests in start-ups himself, explained that companies often raise product MSRPs to stay competitive to insurance companies, but in doing so price out individuals who may have been able to pay out-of-pocket for a device.

With beginnings as a nonprofit, Kalogon has chosen to rethink how to use capitalism as an engine for good. "The leading cushion was invented 50 years ago and hasn't really been changed. We built a product that was entirely focused on solving the customer's needs," Balz said, "by trying to do what was right and not what was easy."

Neal Weinstock is the founder and CEO of Soliddd, developing AR- and VR-powered smart glasses that can support individuals with macular degeneration and other forms of vision loss. Weinstock explains that after 15 years of testing and a successful debut at CES this year, the company is only now opening up a path for users to get prequalified and test the glasses via a collaboration with the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary at Mount Sinai.

"We really, really care about our scientific and medical credibility," Weinstock said. "There's [200] million people in the world who absolutely need the first product that we can bring out, and we can only make a few thousand."  

Affordability is accessibility 

Medtech founders like Weinstock and Balz start their businesses already battling pricing and access. Many are now encumbered by staggering import fees, as well. Thomas spoke of a startup specializing in dementia support products that's currently paying out a $30,000 tariff bill just to order more inventory — without having made any sales. Other tech companies in Weinstock's circle have faced million-dollar tariff bills as their stock is held at the country's shipping ports, despite desperately attempting to shift manufacturing domestically. Similarly, a manufacturing colleague of Balz had to lay off staff to afford seven-figure costs related to shipping containers. 

Incurring even more additional costs from tariffs means these companies must choose between "eating" the differences or alienating even more consumers with higher unit prices. That can sink a startup quickly. 

"We have no idea just how much our costs are going to be because of the tariffs," said Weinstock. Soliddd's product is partially manufactured in the United States, but they also use Qualcomm chips from third party manufacturers, and proprietary pieces that are imported from other countries, like Japan. "I've had a long career doing hardware, and I see that hardware has just gone away in the United States," he said.

Other federal changes — new fee processes under the U.S. Patent Office, antiquated Medicare codes, and the Big Beautiful Bill — may add unforeseen costs. But investing in accessible design (and a better insurance reimbursement structure) could actually save the government money, too. According to Balz, the average pressure injury costs Medicare around $44,000, a steep price tag that could be slashed with preventative mobility aids.

More often than not, people with disabilities are bearing the cost of these solutions. A 2020 study from the National Disability Institute found that individuals with disabilities required 28 percent more income (about $17,690 annually) to achieve the same standard of living as non-disabled households. Out-of-pocket costs for these individuals are more than twice the average of someone without a disability. Acquiring assistive devices often requires a complicated formula of partial health insurance coverage, personal costs, and even loans — many have turned to crowdfunding to get around the staggering prices. 

"How do you pass off some of the tariff impact without pricing yourself out of the market or overdoing a price shift to make it not accessible?" asked Thomas. "Affordability is also accessibility."

The problem goes both ways. Most companies in this industry are not raking in a profit — they rely on low volume manufacturing and higher prices to subsist. "Existing Low Vision Products sell for a lot of money per unit," explained Weinstock. "They don't sell too many, but we can charge a lot for the glasses — more than I would like to charge." 

Investing in accessible tech is investing in empathy

Companies like Kalogon have benefited from applying their assistive technologies to other industries early on, circumventing the complicated medical environment until they've got a firm financial foundation. In the case of the company's smart, pressure-sensing seats, Kalogon earned a contract with the U.S. Air Force and the Department of Defense before it fully went to market for people with disabilities, seeing an opportunity for the smart seats to reduce discomfort for military aircrews. That money in turn bolstered their internal R&D and a connected chain of domestic manufacturing. 

Kalagon is an outlier, though. Others fail before they can even get to those in need, facing notoriously high barriers to entry that include operating at deficits and trying to get their products through complicated reimbursement systems. Balz says he heard a common refrain while pitching his product: "There's a lot of tombstones there."   

Getting that cash flow becomes a crucial first step for these businesses. But these founders don't often describe their work as driven by profit. "You're trying to understand your consumer needs. You're trying to understand what the market needs. You're trying to meet those needs and not just build a product and hope someone likes it, but fit the needs of the individuals and society and make an impact," said Thomas. "These are often very passionate founders that come into this space who have a personal story or have some emotional connection to a need — that's wonderful." Add on harrowing tariff costs, and businesses are already seeing the cash flow dwindle, Thomas explained.   

Weinstock ties cash flow woes to the U.S.'s shift away from domestic manufacturing, which incentivizes less and less hardware in-country. "It's hard enough to get investment into a company making consumer hardware in this country," said Weinstock. "It just accelerates the trend towards only having software and services. You know, you got to be crazy to start a hardware company. I guess I'm crazy."

"What's impacting sales right now is more a slowdown because of the uncertainty," said Thomas. There's uncertainty among investors, founders, and consumers, who are waiting to see who will be saddled with the costs and how the industry will fare. But there's also a sense of nervousness among distributors and manufacturers, who must now make careful decisions about the international business they conduct — and which contracts are worth keeping. 

But "it's a growth category that is under appreciated by investors," Weinstock said. "Populations are aging, and the number of people who use assistive technology is only growing, and so there's a market there. Medical tech in general is only going to grow. And assistive technologies, to use the term broadly, are only going to grow." 

Tariffs may accelerate more profit-driven thinking

Disability, in a sense, is universal — from temporary illnesses to declining eyesight, or cognitive and mobility issues exacerbated with age, everyone will at one point in their life benefit from assistive and medical technologies designed for people with disabilities. Take Kalgon, for example, which, as Balz explains, inadvertently solved a problem that had a non-disabled commercial need. "In a lot of ways, you see innovation for people with disabilities heavily lag the rest of the world," explained Balz. "And in other ways, you actually see solving problems for people with disabilities being ahead of the curve, and then really benefiting everyone — the curb cut effect, elevators, even glasses are an assistive device."

If the tech world is all about progress, about finding the next big thing that proves the human capacity to innovate, then its failure to nurture assistive tech companies may be one of its biggest contradictions. 

"The history of innovation is that it doesn't usually come from inside big companies," Weinstock said. "It may get created somewhere within them, and then just doesn't emerge," as for-profit businesses make tough calls about market profitability. Balz agrees that assistive tech leaders offer a unique perspective often missed by Big Tech's loudest voices. "This is a market that requires a lot of empathy to be able to innovate," said Balz. "If there's one thing Fortune 500 companies are bad at, it's having empathy with their customers."

Corporate America is good at stepping in once a concept is proven, though. Many adaptive technologies, designed initially for a small market, are later reinvented and resold to larger ones — the concepts that power them may be picked up by corporations and used for a wider set of applications. Thomas helped pilot an early version of Liftware, technically impressive counterbalancing spoons and forks that help people with tremors. The startup was later acquired by Google, and became a viral sensation over night.

As veterans of the industry, investors like Thomas and founders like Balz and Weinstock have observed a cycle of companies rise and fall under economic pressure and a lack of investment. Weinstock spent the 1980s in Mexico, at the height of the country's protectionist import tariffs. He described witnessing the sharp decline in domestically manufactured products, like cheap cutlery that, instead of steadying a trembling hand, just snapped in half — this, he notes, was a failure to look ahead.

"We should be doing things that encourage the next generations of technology," said Weinstock. "With tariffs, you're just going to get forks that break."