He’s just a Mountainville kid who wants to do his part to make the world a better place for everyone.

When one reads that phrase they might think they’re going to read a story about a kid who goes out picking up garbage in the park, or who is selling lemonade to donate the proceeds to the animal shelter. Or maybe a Scout raising money to send another kid to camp, or a person sending cards to veterans in the hospital.

David Sirota may have done any or all of those things, but these days the 2015 Cornwall Central High School graduate is the founder and CEO of his own company, ROLLIN, an accessibility platform.

Accessibility? To what, you might ask. The answer is to ‘everything and everywhere’.

ROLLIN, by Sirota’s own definition at joinrollin.com/app, “scores 105,000+ restaurants, hotels, parks, museums, and outdoor spaces 0 to 100 for real accessibility. Built for wheelchair, walker, and cane users, families with strollers, elderly visitors, and people with sensory needs.”

In other words, it’s a freedom-finder for those who face daily challenges in getting into or using public spaces. It’s a challenge Sirota is familiar with. His father uses a wheelchair.

“My goal is to help people improve their quality of life,” Sirota explains. You may have heard his story recently. He spoke at the June 9 Cornwall Town Board meeting, presented to the Cornwall Central School District Special Education Parent Teacher Organization, and addressed families and staff at SEPTA Cornwall Elementary. He has also been featured on WABC Eyewitness News, sat down for a podcast interview with WAA Radio (Wreaths Across America’s program on iHeartRadio), and has stories in the works with Vision Times, Hudson Valley Magazine and other regional outlets.

After high school, Sirota attended SUNY Orange “for a little bit, but college wasn’t for me,” he said last week. He went on to spend several years in the technology industry, including work as a network engineer at West Point, before deciding to tackle something new.

That new thing was building ROLLIN, and a way to help his father, and anyone else, know which restaurants could easily accommodate a wheelchair. Or, heck, even places where folks with strollers could easily get in the door.

“I remember thinking, ‘there has to be a modern way to fix this problem,’” he said. So he gathered a few advisors in the legal, media and medical fields, and got to work. “I learn best by getting into a situation and working through it.”

He built the platform, and then set about populating it. That meant getting it out to the people who would know best where they were easily welcome, potential users. It launched “soft, but loud,” and has grown exponentially in the last few months. “I am actually having to be careful that it’s not getting too big too fast,” he said.

While it isn’t social media, the platform is user-reliant. Once the ROLLIN app is downloaded (it’s free, and currently available for Apple products, with Android coming soon) the user puts in feedback. Can they get into the restaurant or store easily? Are the bathrooms accessible? Is the lighting good for people with sensory issues?

“The users are trusted and approved,” Sirota said. “But every submission is reviewed by humans.” Currently ROLLIN is in 15 states, with over 105,000 locations mentioned.

When he was at the Town Board earlier this month, he spoke about Cornwall becoming a pilot community, with a push being made for municipal participation. He said several local restaurants (Rocky Bagels and 2 Alices) are already participating, and he hopes Storm King Art Center will soon too.

“I think this would help Cornwall and its businesses by ‘putting them on the map’, while at the same time, help us learn how to do this at the municipal level,” he said.

Sirota is quick to point out that ROLLIN is not just an app. The bigger picture, he said, is becoming the place people, businesses, and cities turn to when accessibility is on the line. He pointed to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been law for more than 35 years now, and said that even with all that time on the books, one of its biggest shortcomings has been the gap between physical access and the data people actually need to find it.

“We have a long, long way to go,” he said. “The ADA changed the physical world. We’re trying to make sure the digital world catches up, so that accessibility isn’t an afterthought every time the way we interact with the web changes.” ROLLIN, he said, is being built as accessibility infrastructure for the next generation of how people plan, navigate, and go out.

That work has already brought ROLLIN into partnerships outside the restaurant world. The company is an official accessibility technology partner of Omnium Circus, a national touring production that is the country’s first fully inclusive and comprehensively accessible circus. Sirota said ROLLIN is the only accessibility tech company partnered with an all-accessible circus. The two organizations are using each tour stop as a chance to put accessible entertainment, dining, and lodging information directly in front of families who need it.

Sirota also hopes to involve New York City’s accessibility office, as well as medical offices around the country. ROLLIN is his full-time focus now. The company has been bootstrapped to date, funded through Sirota’s consulting work. With the platform live, the user base growing, and the Cornwall municipal pilot taking shape, Sirota is now opening a seed round to fund the next phase. The goal, he said, is to expand the team, accelerate coverage into more states, and build out ROLLIN’s offerings for municipalities, businesses, and the tourism industry, so that cities, restaurants, hotels and destinations can plug straight into ROLLIN’s accessibility data.

“We want to be the place people look when they’re planning to go out or take someone out,” he said. “We’re using cutting edge technology to take accessibility mainstream. The vision is for ROLLIN to be the infrastructure that sits underneath it all.”

He says that near-daily changes in artificial intelligence make his job both easier and more difficult, but that he’s enjoying the challenge of it all.

“There really isn’t anything like it,” he said of the platform. “I really hope that it continues growing to help give people all across the country their independence back.”