01 — The Problem
Eight Barriers to Support and Success
A family moving a neurodivergent student from grade 11 through a successful first year and ultimately on to a career has to navigate eight separate barriers to success.
To reach their potential, a student has to get past all eight barriers. Throughline Learning supports them each step of the way.
02 — The Market
Demand is rising. Capacity is shrinking.
In February 2026, Algonquin College eliminated seven faculty positions in their Centre for Accessible Learning and replaced them with support staff roles. According to OPSEU, the new roles require less education and less experience. The college told students the change would align the service “with the services provided at other Ontario colleges.”
What that does to the service, in the union’s words:
“The accessibility of having a CAL counsellor who is able to meet the student's needs in terms of very individualized, very specific accommodations... They'll move to a more prescribed list of available accommodations; really just a checklist.”
Tracy Henderson, President, OPSEU Local 415
What it does to a student:
“I was with a person for about a year or so, and then I got an email saying they aren't here anymore and that I'm going to be with someone new from now on. In my case, that's really nerve-racking because I have social anxiety which then meant it'd take a long time to get comfortable with someone again completely out of the blue.”
Elizabeth St-Charles, second-year student
The pattern is national. Wilkinson and Martens (2024) assessed 86 Canadian universities and found accessibility information inconsistent and incomplete, published on websites that themselves fail accessibility standards.
Shifting student demographics hide the size of the problem.
HEQCO has reported college accessibility registrations falling, from 16.3% in 2020 to 12.9% in 2022–23, but this is a result of international students being unlikely to register (1.2%) vs. domestic students (23.5%). During the 2020-23 period, international students made up roughly half of college enrolments. Since the federal government changed study permit rules and quotas in 2024, international student enrolments have fallen by as much as 75% at some institutions. Demand for accessibility services from domestic students continues to grow.
03 — The Venture
One integrated service, from high school to career
Throughline Learning is an online, two-person practice working with families from program selection, through the transition into post-secondary, and on to launching a career.
I’m Anna Veronica, a registered psychotherapist and experienced accessibility counsellor. I interpret the psychoeducational assessment, work out what the student needs, explain it in terms everyone can understand, and support the student and their family through all the transitions from high school to post secondary to employment.
I’m John, an educational technologist and instructional designer. I put together the technology setup to support Anna Veronica’s recommendations, teach the student to use it, and do periodic check-in sessions to make sure they stay on track.
Why assistive technology often fails
The tools exist and many of them are good. The problem is not a missing tool. It is that giving a student a tool does not mean they can use it effectively. The two leading predictors of technology abandonment are tools chosen without student input and tools provided without student buy-in.
We are not reinventing the wheel. We are teaching students how to drive.
What about the free programs?
Some institutions run their own transition programs. Toronto Metropolitan University's SHIFT is free to incoming students with documented disabilities, and students should use it. It begins after admission and accessibility registration, which is more than a year after Throughline Learning’s services start. Our students arrive at their college or university’s Accessibility Services knowing what they need and prepared to succeed.
04 — The Engagement
Twenty hours, timed for maximum value
Throughline Learning’s 20-hour Preparation and Transition package is $5,000, which is a 10% discount on our hourly rate of $275. The package runs from grade 11 course selection to the end of first year. Sessions are timed around the post secondary dates and deadlines that require informed decisions and actions.
Additional sessions are available at $275/hr. Clients can schedule additional sessions at any time during or after their Preparation and Transition package. Many clients continue to work with Throughline Learning through the rest of their post-secondary journey and transition to work.
05 — Business Model
Three tiers to serve a diverse market
The map. What the process is, when it starts, what an IEP does and does not do, and what happens at each of the eight barriers. This provides goodwill support for those who cannot afford to pay, and a chance to assess the quality of our offerings for those who are undecided.
Timelines, elearning resources, general documentation checklist, advocacy scripts, and tool guides, all applicable to any Canadian college or university. This tier scales without consuming an hour of ours, and it is priced where families who cannot reach the full service can still get help.
The two-person service across twenty-seven months, from grade 11 course selection to the end of first year, with additional hours available during or after.
The self-serve library is built to the standard it teaches: audio-first or genuinely multimodal rather than text with an optional audio button, short segments, WCAG and AODA compliant. Most free resources for neurodivergent students are walls of text delivered in a PDF. Throughline Learning’s resources meet students where they are.
The library content is evergreen material, covering topics like understanding your own cognitive profile, what accommodations are for, how to have the conversation with an instructor, and how to build a habit around a technology tool.
In addition to the public- and client-facing resources outlined above, we are building a database of per-institution documentation requirements, funding rules, institutional processes and deadlines. This will not be a public facing tool. It is a tool for the Psychotherapist and a potential long-term source of additional revenue. An up-to-date, verified database is a competitive advantage for the current business, and could be sold on a subscription basis to other student advising services once Throughline Learning’s client-facing business is running at capacity and cannot take on additional clients.
06 — Unit Economics
See how revenue grows as we scale
Costs are close to zero because the business is two people and no building. Fixed overhead is $21,200 a year, plus $10,000 for database maintenance once it is live.
Move the sliders to test the model.
Assumes 80% take the 20-hour package and the rest buy an average of 12 hourly sessions.
Eight families a year covers fixed costs. Forty covers costs plus $140,000 across the two of us, about eight client-facing hours a week each. The practice runs part-time today at five client sessions a week.
07 — Critical Assessment
Risks and constraints
Throughline Learning’s business model considered against six important screening criteria.
08 — Why Us
The competency pairing is the product
A psychotherapist who can read an assessment and tell a family what it means about their child usually cannot build the technology setup around it. An educational technologist who can build that setup is not qualified to interpret the assessment.
Educational consultants, executive function coaches and neurodiversity-affirming therapists each serve part of this market. What is uncommon is the combination. Clinical interpretation, guidance on institution fit, and technology implementation are normally bought from three people.
Anna Veronica is a registered psychotherapist with 10+ years of experience as a post-secondary accessibility counsellor, as well as experience as a faculty member and associate dean. She has a unique depth of knowledge in how neurodivergence, documentation and accommodation interact with the multiple systems and processes of a post secondary institution.
John has 30 years of experience in the post secondary education system. In that time he has worked in admissions and recruitment, online education, instructional design, and professional development, as well as 15 years as part-time faculty. He has an unparalleled breadth of experience across the entire student life-cycle.
09 — The Ask
We are asking for
We are not seeking equity. A two-person practice has no exit to sell, so the return here is cash rather than a share of a sale.
Ten percent of monthly gross revenue until the cap is reached, then nothing further. At full operating capacity that retires the balance in a little over four years, an annual return of 12.5%.
The money is not for the client-facing service. That service is running now and turns a profit at eight client-facing hours a week each. The funding is to build the two digital assets that add scale without consuming our hours.
Audio-first, WCAG-compliant modules built to the standard described above, sold at $350 a year. An average of twenty-two subscriptions per year over four years repays the principal and interest.
Two independent sources, CADDAC and Wilkinson and Martens, have found that the published information families depend on is often out-of-date or incorrect. An up-to-date, verified database is a competitive advantage for the current business, and could be sold on a subscription basis to other student advising services once Throughline Learning’s client-facing business is running at capacity and cannot take on additional clients. Annual maintenance costs of $10,000 are paid out of operations.
The obvious question is why this cannot be funded out of the practice. It cannot be funded out of the practice yet. At the current run rate the practice bills roughly $63,000. As a full-time practice that grows to $186,400. To get there the practice needs greater visibility, and the free tier and the self-serve library are the acquisition channel.