JAMESVILLE-DEWITT — From the time he was little, Jamesville-DeWitt senior Brian Tollar has always been interested in knowing exactly how things work in the world around him, from water towers to laptop computers.
Nowadays, though, that curiosity has carried over to running his own business, Tech by Brian, through which the engineering-minded Tollar modifies toys to better suit individuals with disabilities.
He currently focuses on that endeavor as part of his Capstone class at J-D High School, which he’s been enrolled in since this past September, but it was about two and a half years prior during his freshman year summer that he actually started up the business.
Since establishing Tech by Brian, Tollar has sold thousands of specially adapted toy products all over the map, including to Australia, Canada and every single state in the United States.
His switch-adapted toys range from a bubble machine, a train set and a dancing penguin to a mini Ferris wheel, a remote-control car, and a playing card shuffler.
In his supply of products for sale, there’s also a switch-activated pitching machine with six balls included and a tennis ball launcher perfect for pet owners, allowing them to finally play fetch with their dog if they weren’t able to previously.
For the warmer-weather months, there’s a water gun for anyone who always wanted to soak their siblings, or just for cooling off on the hottest of days. That squirt gun, which is attachable to a wheelchair, accommodates a person with a motor disability by letting them push a button instead of pulling a trigger.
Tollar said that without such modifications, someone with a disability might have had trouble feeling like they could interact with their pet to their liking or engage as much in activities with their family and friends.
“It’s so fulfilling because I get videos sent to me of kids playing with these toys they had never played with before,” Tollar said. “We don’t really think about it as we get older, but it’s incredible how important play is in your cognitive development, and being able to be more independent in all of that makes a difference.”
Though the expenses of buying the toys online in their original state can add up, Tollar said he seeks to keep his costs lower than those of his competitors but just high enough to both cover shipping costs and sustain his side business so that he can keep it going.
“Every other company on the market this is competing with has higher prices and I don’t really know why,” Tollar said. “These people have enough on their hands with hospital bills and everything going on, so that was kind of my purpose behind making the products as affordable as they can be.”
The bigger payoff, he said, is the appreciation from customers with special needs and the enjoyment they get from playing with more accessible toys.
Tollar has donated adapted toys to other J-D schools and the district’s special education classroom known as the Tecumseh Learning Pad, as well as different local districts and hospitals. He even modified toys for a North Carolina toy drive after the woman running it reached out to him for his services.
As busy as things get around the holiday season with Christmas present orders, Tollar said he enjoys the soldering work involved, the ins and outs of running the business, and the problem solving that comes with figuring out the unique circuitry components and other inner mechanisms of each toy.
Though he’s up for the challenge and is always set on giving it his all, Tollar said that sometimes a toy can be too much of a pain to adapt properly or next to impossible to work around with the tools he has depending on how it’s been manufactured.
Still, he said there’s no end to the list of toys he’d give a try to modifying.
He’s additionally started designing his own products from scratch for more practical uses, like a motor-powered ingredient pourer he created to make cooking easier for those who would otherwise have difficulties due to their disability.
A piano player and All-State cellist too, Tollar also put his skills toward something for his own benefit: a pedal that turns pages of sheet music with the press of a foot.
Tollar said that most of all it was his mom who inspired him in the first place to modify toys for those with disabilities, since she’s a speech-language pathologist who works with nonverbal children day to day.
A relatively new class at J-D High School, Tollar’s Capstone course is co-taught by math teacher Charles Clinton and school librarian Mary Panek.
Panek said the idea is for the students in the two sections to venture outside of their comfort zones and learn through real-world experience while gaining skills pertaining to communication, time management, and pivoting when faced with different obstacles.
“We’re hoping with their final reflections they can look back and say they learned as a person and accomplished a lot,” Panek said. “It’s not as much about a letter grade or test papers.”
Clinton said the interdisciplinary pass-fail course gives students like Tollar a chance to explore something they were already passionate about but didn’t necessarily get the opportunity to focus on during school hours beforehand.
With that, the students have agency over what they work on, and their projects bring them outside the walls of the high school and into the larger community as their advisers guide their progress and connect them with local experts in their realm of choice.
Instead of doing his soldering at school, Tollar uses class time to conduct research, expand the reach of his business, and seek guidance from other teachers on how to move forward.
As part of his Capstone project, Tollar is trying to localize his business more, put out toy products that would appeal to a greater age range, and get toys in as many hands as possible while working on his website techbybrian.com.
Tollar, who plans to study electrical engineering once he gets to college, said he plans to continue his business after graduating from J-D.
“I’ve been able to push this out to so many people already,” he said. “I wonder where this could go in the future.”
Other students taking the Senior Capstone elective are concentrating on lead issues in the city of Syracuse, body image concerns, providing art supplies for financially disadvantaged students, the topic of gerrymandering, and mental health for student-athletes.
