We're not the front of the movement. We're the engine behind it.
The communities living with voice impairment — stroke survivors, AAC users, people with aphasia, ALS, cerebral palsy, brain injury, apraxia, dysarthria, selective mutism, autistic individuals, late-stage dementia families — already have advocates fighting for them. What they've never had is shared infrastructure: free technology, funding that never comes from the people they serve, and a policy fight pitched at the category level. We built a company to carry exactly that — and committed it to the cause. We don't speak for anyone. We power the people who do.
There's a tribe that doesn't have a name yet.
The disability rights movement names the people who can't see, can't hear, and can't get around. It hasn't named the people who can't speak the way the world expects.
AgeWell Alliance gives these communities one shared name — voice impairment — and the engine to back it: free tools, funding, and the policy muscle that turn separate fights into one civil-rights category. We don't run those fights. We power the organizations and communities who do.
Awareness without access changes nothing.
Most mission orgs name a problem and raise awareness. That work matters — and it's not enough. If we're going to name it, we're going to solve it in the real world.
We name the gap.
Voice impairment is the unnamed civil rights category — alongside vision, hearing, and mobility. Until it's named, it's not protected. We're naming it.
We build the fix.
Communication-access tools — designed with stroke survivors and AAC users — that work at counters, town halls, hospital intakes, and registration desks. Not slideware. Real software in real places.
We ship to the counter.
Validated by the Connecticut State ADA Coordinator. Deployed across 151 Connecticut municipalities. The model is real, in the field, and working — and it's the proof point we point to when we ask other states to follow.
"A lot of people point to the problem. We built a way across it."
Our charter.
Five structural commitments. They live on the homepage. They live in customer contracts. They're the rails everything else runs on.
We never sell user data.
Not to advertisers. Not to data brokers. Not to anyone. The communities we serve are already over-surveilled and under-served. We don't add to that.
We never monetize the people we serve.
No ads. No profiling. No dark patterns. Vulnerable users are not a revenue stream — they're the reason the alliance exists.
We never sell the mission.
No acquirer takes us over unless they sign these same five commitments. The mission survives the company.
Revenue from products funds the work.
Communication-access products are real businesses. The money they make goes back into advocacy and coalition work — not back to shareholders.
Lived-experience leaders from the constituent communities will hold formal governance roles in the alliance. This is not yet true. It's the work currently in front of us — and we name it openly so we're held to it.
From one product to
one alliance.
AgeWell Alliance grew out of a simple realization: there is no named civil rights category for the people whose voices the world doesn't hear. Here is where we are on the road to changing that.
The first product
TinkySpeak shipped — a communication-access tool built with stroke survivors and AAC users. The work that became the alliance started here, on a kitchen table, with one family.
Connecticut validation
Validated by the Connecticut State ADA Coordinator and deployed across 151 Connecticut municipalities through TinkyTown. The model is real, in the field, and working.
The alliance is named
AgeWell Alliance reorganizes around a single mission: name voice impairment as a civil rights category, unify the communities inside it, and push for the laws and accommodations that follow.
Building shared governance
We are building shared governance with lived-experience leaders from the constituent communities. We don't speak for the community. We open the door so it can speak for itself.
Founder & lived-experience leadership.
We're a small alliance run by builders and the people who live with voice impairment every day. We name everyone honestly — and we name what's still being built.
Luke Kistler
Built TinkySpeak and TinkyTown alongside the people who use them. Started with a single conviction: if we're going to name this gap, we're going to deploy the fix at the counter. Connecticut-anchored. Mission-locked. Allergic to slideware.
Personal motivation lives in Stories as the community shares its own. The founder's story is one of many — not the only one.
Lived-experience leadership
Charter commitment #5 says lived-experience leaders from the constituent communities will hold formal governance roles. That's not yet true. We're not going to fake it with stock photos and made-up bios.
If you're a stroke survivor, AAC user, person with aphasia, autistic individual, ALS patient, or family proxy with consent — and you want to help build this layer — come talk to us.
Validation partner: AgeWell Alliance and TinkyTown were validated by the Connecticut State ADA Coordinator — a state-level public-sector validation, not a paid endorsement — and on that basis 151 CT municipalities adopted the model.