ATU712 – TotChop with Matt Kawiecki

Hi, this is Matt Kawiecki and I’m the founder of totchop, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 712 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on January 17th, 2025. On today’s show, we’re super excited to learn all about the totchop. Let’s have a quick story about a partnership working to make kiosks more accessible. So now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, are you heading to the ATIA conference here at the end of January? Well, we are here from Assistive Technology Update, the INDATA Project and our other assistive technology programs here at Easterseals Crossroads. We’ve got a pretty large group going this year, and we’re very excited to get to learn about all the new assistive technology out there, as well as learn from some of the professionals out in the field. If you happen to be attending ATIA this year, it would be really great to connect, and if you’re looking for some sessions to attend, why don’t you attend one of the ones that we are participating in.

On Friday, January 31st, I’ll be presenting with a wonderful Lisa Becker on transition tools for individuals with cognitive impairments in post-secondary education. This presentation will highlight and deep dive into different assistive technologies and accommodations that can assist individuals with cognitive impairments with a transition to higher education and help them to achieve success. We’ll go over all kinds of different stuff from mind mapping to planning, to staying focused, to writing, reading, and other needs that can affect individuals with all different kinds of cognitive impairments. If you do attend those training, you’ll come out with some really great ideas what might be able to assist individuals that you might work with or know as well as maybe some methods to identify and pick out what those might be.

Also be presenting on Saturday, February 1st with off the shelf accommodations for aging. Brian Norton will be joining me for this presentation, which will go over built in accessibility features and uses of everyday off the shelf electronics and other things, and how they can assist individuals as they age in order to live full, active and independent lives. This presentation is also very excited, honored, and humbled to be chosen as one of the Joy Zabala Spirit Award winners. We’re super excited to be chosen for that award and looking very forward to presenting and talking to everyone down there. So again, if you’re heading to the ATIA conference here at the end of the month down in Orlando, Florida, look around for some of our team from Assistive Technology Update from Easterseals Crossroads and from the INDATA Project.

And also be sure to attend one of our trainings if you like, and stop by, say hi. We look forward to seeing everyone there. Our story today comes from Cision PR Newswire, and it’s titled TPGi and Storm Interface Partner to Advanced Accessible Self-Service Kiosks with JAWS for Kiosks. This story talks about a partnership between TPGi, which is a Vispero company and Storm Interface, which is, I guess they make self-service accessibility and different human interface devices. So they’re working together in order to put JAWS for kiosks, so the screen reader and Storm Interface’s AT products into kiosks to make them available and accessible for individuals with a lot of different needs.

So this helps out in a few different ways. Of course, JAWS and JAWS for kiosk is a screen reading software, so it’s going to be able to make information there on the screen that’s visual auditory, so that an individual who is blind or low vision is able to access that information. And then with this stuff from Storm Interface, this brings a robust and versatile input devices. They have some things called NavPad, NavBar, and AudioNav. These are going to give you alternative input methods such as tactile navigation and audio guidance, just making sure that folks that just can’t rely on a traditional touchscreen because of mobility challenges, cognitive impairments, any kind of thing. That they have ways to be able to access these.

Reading on in the story, part of this partnership comes with European Accessibility Act, ADA Title II and ACA Section 1557. Deadline’s looming. So this is basically from what it says here, going to be turnkey accessibility solutions embedded in kiosks and self-service devices. Reading through the story, it says the collaboration addresses key challenges in self-service accessibility by enhancing the input options, being able to support devices like numeric keypads, QWERTY keyboards, tactile navigation tools, just so that folks can easily use it a little bit better. It ensures privacy, these audio enabled solutions to guide users without having to rely on visual interfaces.

It says it offers JAWS scripting capabilities for tailored customer interactions, and it can help business meet those standards and accessibility regulations coming up. We’ll put a link to this press release over in the show notes. Well, what a really cool partnership and just making sure that self-service kiosks because I know at least here in the states, it’s hard to walk into a lot of places without finding an iPad on a stand or some other kind of self-service kiosk where maybe you pick your seat, order your food, order other services and everything else. So making those fully accessible to individuals with all different kinds of needs and abilities really does help out and really just makes it to where they can access your products, your services, and the things that it is that you’re trying to sell.

So it’s not just about regulation and kind of keeping up with those, but it’s really just not the right thing to do, of course, but also good business. Just making sure that anyone that comes into your business or tries to access, again, your goods, your services, whatever it is that you’re offering, has full access to those independently as well. Not having to find a sighted assistant or somebody else who can access that touch screen, but being able to independently do what it is that they want to do. So very cool partnership. Again, we’ll put a link to this release over in the show notes.

Listeners today we are super excited to talk with Matt Kawiecki, and he’s here to tell us all about the totchop and how it can make food prep easier and safer for individuals of different abilities. Matt, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks so much for having me, Josh.

I am really excited, especially when I get to talk to somebody kind of local. So Matt’s here in Fort Wayne, which isn’t far from Indianapolis, kind of where we’re based. But before we get into talking about the totchop, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. My name is Matt. I’m Indiana born and raised. I went to Purdue University and coming out of school, worked at Eli Lilly for 10 years in a variety of manufacturing and R&D roles before jumping into this startup last year. So happy to be here and excited to share our background and where this idea came from and how we’ve not yet pivoted into disability space, but we’ve begun to research and understand that the product we designed for another space might be a fantastic assistive technology.

And sometimes that’s my favorite kind of things. Maybe they’re not made for a specific purpose, but once you get it out there, it’s like, “Oh, this can be used in a lot of different ways.” So I guess let’s start with maybe from the beginning. I don’t know if we should talk about what totchop is or maybe where the idea came from first. I’ll leave that one up to you.

Sure. I think they’re pretty closely related. So shout out to my wife, but her parents back in 2018 bought a souvenir while on a trip up to Alaska. And it was this very beautiful Ulu knife. And this knife, we didn’t really know what to use it for. It looked like something that was for charcuterie. Fast-forward, I’m an engineer. When I see something inefficient in my daily life, I look for things around the house to try to make it faster, and it really boils down to that. So I came across this knife while I was preparing food for my daughter at the time, and I was like, “I’m going to try that.” And it was that aha moment when I realized that a rounded blade with a rounded bowl allow you to cut up food very quickly.

So then I of course went to my wife and I was like, “This is great. You have to use this to cut up food for Abby every day.” And then it became our daily driver for a couple of years. The only thing about it was that it’s wood, and when you have two working parents, when you have a daily dishwasher load, you want to be able to conveniently clean things. So the only thing I’d hoped for was that I could go and find one online that was dishwasher safe, more convenient to use in sort of our busy daily lives. When I didn’t find that, that’s when I had this, “That’s a neat idea.” But that idea was just kind of on the back burner until October of 2022.

We had a choking scare with our 14-month old at the time, and luckily she ended up okay, but after calling EMS and thinking your child’s unresponsive at the table, it’s one of those moments in life like, “There’s before that happened and after. What am I going to do after?” And that’s when I had this idea of combining the ingenuity of a rounded knife like the Ulu, along with measuring aids, making something that’s tailored for parents to cut up food and also convenient to clean, easy to clean, et cetera. That’s where the idea of totchop came about. So it took about a year to develop, and we went through a lot of human factors studies where we really were looking at what moms and dads are doing in the kitchen while preparing food for kids.

And part of that involves often holding a kid. So if you’ve ever had to try to prepare food while holding a kid, it’s not very easy. You can maybe take a cleaver and start chopping, but food’s going to fly around everywhere. So then we put a focus on one-handed use. And the way that totchop is designed, and I know your listeners might not have seen a picture of it or anything before, but it has a curved bowl for your cutting surface. If you add non-slip feet to this cutting surface, then you can essentially use the product one-handed because the bowl acts as your third hand essentially. So that’s the design inspiration for creating one-handed use. It was to allow a mom or dad to hold their 10-month-old, 12 month old and participate in food prep, and then the kid’s happy.

They’re engaged in food, hopefully more willing to try the food that you’re preparing. So that was the design inspiration and line of thinking we had from the beginning, and that’s where it translates into the disability space. We’re like, “Huh, it can be used with one hand. You don’t really need that much fine motor control. It’s very quick. It’s really easy to clean, and your fingers aren’t next to the blade. Let’s dig into this a little bit.”

And kind of like you said in the disability space, of course, with one hand or kind of impeded motor control, but also I could see how if I was visually impaired, because again, it’s kind of being all held there without having to have my hands all close to the blade, can make a huge, huge difference.

Yes. Definitely. And one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is we’re actively in the R&D phase for our kids’ version of totchop, and the kids’ version has a dull blade. So when you think of a dull blade, like a butter knife, for example, it’s not that effective at cutting. However, with the design of this knife, because you’re just pushing, the dull blade still functions quite well and can cut, I’m estimating 80 to 90% of foods pretty easily. So when testing this with kids and designing this with kids in mind, we wanted the blade to still function as well as we can. So make it as sharp as you can without being able to cut skin. And then I have a quick story here regarding visually impaired.

My wife, she’s an ophthalmologist, so she received a letter at work from this local center here in Fort Wayne that works with people with vision impairment and blindness. And they said that they had an open house coming up. So I was like, “Well, I’m going to reach out to them to maybe test this kid’s knife with someone who struggles with vision impairment.” And I went there, again, it’s before that and after that. It was one of those life-changing moments. You’re watching somebody interact with something you’ve created. There was one individual named Mark, and Mark was completely blind since birth, and he only had use of one hand.

And as I’m trying to soak in all this information while I’m watching him engage with the kid’s prototype knife. He was able to cut up a raw carrot with one hand completely blind and completely safely. And then after seeing that, it’s happening in real time, you can’t really comprehend it. But I asked him as a follow-up, I said, “Mark, have you ever done that before?” And he said, “No.” And he’s 45, 50 years old. So I called my wife on the way home and I was actually brought to tears. I was like, “Rachel, I think this could be life-changing for people with blindness. I mean, not just people with one hand, but people who can’t see because this blade can’t cut them, but it can still cut food.”

So that was a pretty profound experience that I went through, and it really opened my eyes into the reduced independence that most kitchen tools offer people with disabilities or allow people with disabilities, and then the reduced opportunities for learning these essential cooking skills that can bring that independence. So it’s not only for older people like Mark, but I think with kids as well. I reached out to this random lady that I found on Instagram, and her daughter only has, I don’t know if it’s amniotic band syndrome, but her hand is not fully developed on one of her sides. So I sent her a set of the kid’s prototype and looking mainly for feedback. So can your child use this?

And then now she uses it every day, and she said that she’s only three years old, but this is the first time she’s actually able to help in the kitchen with something safe because it’s so easy to use because you’re just pushing. So it’s stories like that I thrive off learning about this space because it’s something that I don’t have to experience in my daily life, which in ways is fortunate in other ways unfortunate because it opens up a lot of different possibilities and exposure to new products and different types of people and all that. But I think that these stories with connecting with individuals with a disability and seeing the range of disabilities that our portfolio products will be able to hopefully help out, that is the most motivating thing I would say that I’ve worked on.

No, that’s awesome. And you brought up just so many different kinds of groups. I mean, not only different kinds of groups, but I really like how you’re including kids in there because I have small kids, and I love that you mentioned the whole holding a kid in one arm. I’ve used that analogy so many times when people are like, “Oh, you know…” Or when we talk about disability, I really can’t relate. It’s like, “Well, I see you have a child there? Have you ever been holding them in your arms? How easy was it to type up something on your computer?” It’s like, “Well, I couldn’t.” Well, same kind of thing. You need an accommodation in order to be able to do that.

So it’s along those same lines, but I mean, especially with kids, and then even mentioned the young girl who maybe had a disability as well, you’re teaching that independence. That you can do things on your own. And I know working in this field for so long, some folks, they don’t get that kind of, I don’t want to say push, push is the wrong word, but the opportunity to be able to do things for themselves. But it seems like anytime I see someone get that opportunity, they usually excel and go on to do even more and more things. So I love that the tool is able to be used in so many different ways by so many, many kind of different people.

Totally agree. It is certainly inspiring to think about, I mentioned those number of disabilities, and we’ve talked about a few here, but for children, for example, with autism or ADHD, down syndrome, developmental delays. There’s so many opportunities just for that dull knife. And then we have, the sharp knife is for sale today. So I will mention that if you think this product could help someone or for your listeners out there, that one’s available today. And then hopefully by April we’re going to have the kids’ dull a knife available as well. But I’m very excited to see once we get that on the market what types of people find the most value in it.

And Matt, you kind of brought this up a little bit, but you said it can even help me with measuring, how does it help me with measuring?

So going back to that choking scare I’d mentioned that we had in the house at the time, that knife that I mentioned that was dirty, and I was cutting up food in a rush because we just got done with work and hungry kids. And typical side of fork, just use what you have. I don’t know if it was too large of a bite or whatnot that caused that choking incident, but after that, I asked myself, “From an engineering standpoint, what’s the fastest way to check a bite size?” In engineering term, it’s a go, no-go.

If it fits in there, it’s a go. If it doesn’t fit in there, it’s a no-go. So directly on the cutting board, there’s a ruler in the top left corner, and then in the top right it has three go, no-go gauges. I call them labeled, minced, diced, and chopped. And the top circle is in line with the recommended bite-sized from the American Association of Pediatrics, which is a half inch.

Nice, nice. That’s awesome. And that makes it is so much easier for folks. I mean, I even think of… As I think of it, people with different developmental disabilities or other kinds of things. I mean I’m not a chef, I like to cook, but a shop, a dice, a chop, I don’t know the difference between those. So having something where I can keep it consistent is not just a lifesaver in some ways. It’s just really darn convenient to be able to kind tell what size I’m making things too. So that’s a great extra kind of tool on there. And then just to make sure, because I know our listeners can’t see it, and this is just from me actually seeing everything.

I love that the cutting board has that, I don’t even know what you want to call it, how it’s indented so that the way the knife actually connects with it, it holds all the food in there. That is really cool. And hopefully our listeners will go check it out and see how it works because it is a pretty darn neat way of being able to, well, to prep your food, to cut things up and to get things ready for the kids for your meal or for whatever you might want to do.

Thanks. I think it’s one of those products, once you… I call it a touch to trust. You don’t actually believe it’s going to be as fast or as easy to use until you use it. And then it’s that eureka moment, where’s this been all my life? Because it does, the gravity feeds the food back towards the center of the bowl, so it’s not running around. So if you’re cutting a grape or small red potatoes or something like that, you can do it one-handed, which there’s another store here, Aaron is his name. Aaron’s a gas station attendant, and I was buying Gatorade or something and noticed that Aaron didn’t have use of one of his hands. And I was like, “Hey, I’m Matt. I love talking to people about a product I’m developing. Would you be willing to test it for me?”

And long story short, Aaron tested the product and he had cerebral palsy, and he and I still remain good friends to this day, but Aaron mentioned that this was the first time he could cut a potato because it didn’t roll away from him. So he had used other curved knives, and his was a larger version called a Mezzaluna, but he mentioned with our cutting board, this was the first time that a potato won’t roll away from him. And Aaron’s again in his forties, and to have something for the first time being able to cut a potato on his own, that was pretty neat.

That is super cool. Well, I know the dull version is still in the works, but if I went and wanted to buy a totchop knife today, kind of what comes in the kit?

So in the kit we have the totchop cutting board, which is a dishwasher-safe plastic. And then recently in November of 2024, so for Black Friday, we made an improvement to the set that a piece of rounded silicone sits on top of that bowl, the cutting bowl. And so silicone’s great because it doesn’t create microplastics. So if you’re cutting on a plastic cutting board over time, I’m sure most of your listeners have seen this, the cutting board wears down little tiny flakes of plastic get in your food. There’s arguments whether or not that is a problem long term.

But the trend and where we want to go as a company is to move more towards the microplastic-free solutions. So the silicone is now a standard part of our offering. So you’ll get the cutting board, you’ll get the silicone cutting surface, and then the stainless steel knife with the soft-touch handle as well.

And if our listeners want to check out, learn more about the totchop or order one for themselves, how would they do that?

So that is possible at totchop.com. T-O-T-C-H-O-P. And as I mentioned, we’ll have the kids’ version up there soon. We’re looking at around an April launch. With a kids’ product, it’s interesting, you have to go through the regulatory requirements for lead testing, and there’s more requirements around a children’s product. So it takes some time to get to that point, but the supply chain’s ready and we should be able to pull that lever here in March-April timeframe.

Awesome, awesome. We look forward to seeing it out there. And listeners, while that’s still in the works, definitely go check out, I guess the original totchop. We’ll call it the original for now or the sharp one. Definitely. Because it is a very cool, and kind of like you said, not just for individuals with disabilities, but pretty much anyone could really benefit from it in their daily lives when they’re cooking, their prepping. Like you said, just getting things ready for those kids when they’re hungry, the patience really disappears pretty darn quick.

Well, hey, Matt, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us all about the totchop, and we look forward to seeing the next iteration come out here soon. But thanks again, and we’re so happy that you made it and that it ended up being a help to people with so many different kinds of abilities.

Thanks, Josh. I really appreciate you having me. So I do want to take the time quickly just to say thank you to Marin, Alicia, Eric, Aaron, Mark, go down the list. These folks have all helped me with the boots on the ground feedback, the people at Turnstone as well here in Fort Wayne, which is an amazing disability center. So just want to make sure to give them a shout-out and say thank you. I hope that my passion for the disability space, hopefully it comes out during this conversation, and it is something that… It’s not the main focus of the company right now, and I haven’t mentioned this, but I’m the only full-time employee with topchop.

So going into a space as overwhelming as the assistive technology from a fragmented market standpoint, it’s too much for me to balance on my own. So if any of your listeners, or if you have anyone in your network that is able to help get this information out to more people with disabilities, I’d love that help. And I know that this community seems to be extremely trustworthy from a word-of-mouth standpoint. So I hope that if you do find potential value in this or if you have some ideas for how to make this easier to access in that market, I am certainly happy to have some conversations around that.

Awesome. Well, listeners, there’s your challenge for today to go out and find folks that can help matter. At least get the word out to folks if this is a tool that might be able to assist them or their children or their family members or anyone that you might know, and we’ll make sure to share the word as well. Matt, thank you again.

Thanks, Josh.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly.

The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.