Hi Fernando! Like most good ideas, the idea for Free Code Camp came out of a multi-year fascination with the problem: we have so much technology around us but so few people are able to truly use it in productive ways.

Even though people have been able to learn to code on their own for free for decades, not enough people were doing so. So it was really a problem of accessibility. So my goal was to remove as many excuses as possible.

Socioeconomic excuses: it's free.

Time constraint excuses (especially important for parents): it's completely self-paced

Hardware constraint excuses: Free Code Camp can be completed on any device with a browser from the last 10 years.

After figuring out what the solution needed to look like, I just needed to figure out a way to implement it. I didn't want to take VC funding (who knows what values VCs would ultimately force us to compromise) or take government funding (takes too long and is too complicated). Open source was a risky but promising option, and in retrospect, it was the smartest decision we've made. Now a majority of the improvements to Free Code Camp's curriculum and codebase are made by skilled volunteers from our community. Our staff (me, Berkeley Martinez and Michael Johnson) can focus on support, strategy, devops, and overseeing nonprofit projects.

As for getting more people with disabilities into coding, the most important step is reassuring them that they can succeed in software development: https://www.quora.com/Can-anyone-learn-how-to-code/answer/Quincy-Larson