Privacy Policy

Effective: January 1, 2021

Please also refer to our Terms of Service.

Introduction

Mission

Akiva is a mission-driven company. We aim to apply the newest advances in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and leading-edge digital technologies to ensure that every child, and individual with special needs has an affordable access to the educational system that enables them to develop their unique abilities to succeed and thrive. We are committed to community, technology, science, research, and we are also committed to the privacy and security of your personal data.

Terminology

Akiva: Herein, the term “Akiva” (or “we”, “our”, “us”) refers to Akiva Systems, LLC, of Santa Monica, California, USA, as well as its Partners.

Partners: The Partners of Akiva Systems, LLC, as incorporated into the term Akiva, include business partners, affiliates, subsidiaries, agents, scientific research collaborators, universities, and subcontractors with whom Akiva Systems, LLC collaborates from time to time. We choose our Partners carefully and intentionally, in line with our Mission and with your interests in mind. Each Partner has a privacy policy, to our knowledge, and we trust them to act in accordance with it. 

Platform: Akiva maintains and develops a series of products and services (collectively, the “Platform”). The Platform can be described as sets of software and accompanying hardware, comprising apps for wearable devices, apps for mobile / portable devices, algorithms, web-based data portals, and/or data stores. The Platform includes products and services known, from time to time, as Akiva, The Akiva System, Akiva Platform, Akiva Ecosystem, Akiva Learning, Akiva Learning Platform, Akiva Learning System, Akiva Learning Ecosystem, Akiva VR, Akiva AI, Akiva Insights, Akiva Partner, Akiva Ambassador, and others (trademarks of Akiva).

Site: Akiva also operates world wide web sites including akiva.ai, getakiva.com, akiva.one, akivavr.com, related sites, newsletters or mailings to those who visit these sites, and emails we may send directly to you regarding the Platform or information on these sites (collectively, the “Site”).

Agreement: This document (the “Agreement”) is a statement of our Privacy Policy governing the use of the Site and the Platform by you. The Agreement outlines types of information we collect from you, ways and reasons we analyze such information, and how it is shared within Akiva and with third parties.

You: For the purposes of the Agreement, you (“you”, “the user”, “customer”) may be a natural person of any age. You may also be a group of natural persons of any age, such as a pre-school, kindergarten, special school, virtual school, school, classroom, clinic, family, marital community, church, parents’ group, meetup group, support group, affiliation group, advocacy group, therapy group, employer, corporation, research community, university, government, NGO, veterans’ group, or other group or entity. If you are a group, then everything in this Agreement that applies to “you” applies to any one or several persons within you, individually and/or in aggregate.

Member: If you register on the Site or the Platform you thus become a “Member”.

Account: A member may have an “Account” on the Platform or Site. Having an Account allows a member to log in to the Platform or Site.

Data Profile: A person may have a “Data Profile” on the Platform or Site, into which relevant information is deposited about the person. A person may have a Data Profile without having an Account, and one Account may be associated with several Data Profiles. (As one illustrative example, a classroom teacher may have an Account and use multiple Data Profiles for the students of that classroom, to keep track of their progress and high scores on an educational game that is part of the Platform.)

Other Terms including Personal and General Data are defined below in their respective sections.

Primary goal of this Agreement

In this Agreement, we strive to outline some of the rules, benefits, and risks associated with your use of the Site and Platform, including those related to privacy.

Complying with this Agreement

By accessing or using the Site or the Platform, you agree to the policies stated in this Agreement.

If you are a Member, then in addition to the policies that are applicable to all users of the Site or Platform, the policies that apply only to Members shall apply to you.

If you are a group of natural persons or other entity, you agree to obtain consent to the policies in the Agreement by persons in your group who may be impacted by your use of the Site or Platform.

Akiva researchers may use the Site or Platform, and the data these collect, to create collective knowledge about education, development, behavior, wellbeing, technology, assessments, or interventions. We fundamentally believe that success in achieving these goals depends on a shared belief between Akiva and you that real-world data will help us all develop useful strategies to improve the independence and wellbeing of all neurodivergent people.

If you do not accept the terms of this Agreement, you may not use the Site or the Platform.

GDPR law

The General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) of 2016 applies to processing of personal data of residents of the European Union.

If you reside in the European Union you may not use the Site or the Platform.

If you begin residing in the European Union at some point after beginning to use the Site or Platform, you must stop using the Site or Platform. It is your responsibility to be aware of your residency and to comply with this Agreement in full.

COPPA law

The Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 is a U.S. Federal law (15 U.S.C. 6501-6505). Our understanding is that COPPA is aimed to protect children under the age of 13 from risks associated with directly using internet sites or online services that may retain and publicly post their personal information without their consent. At Akiva, we take privacy and protection seriously, and are committed to guarding the digital health of children.

If you are under the age of 13, you may not have an Account on our Site or Platform. By using our Site or Platform directly or submitting your personally identifiable information, you certify that you are not under 13.

If you are under the age of 13, you may not log in to the Platform or Site directly, but you may have a Data Profile created for you. The Data Profile for you must be created by a Member over 13 who uses an Account and who complies with all terms of this Agreement as well as our Terms of Service. 

The following is an illustrative example of the difference in policy between Accounts and Data Profiles:

A classroom teacher may use an Account to log in to the Platform and create a Data Profile related to a student. The Data Profile may for instance record information about the progress that the student has made in detecting other people’s emotions in school, as measured by an educational game that is part of the Platform.

If the student is under 13, she or he may not log in to the Platform and may not have an Account. The student’s Data Profile may be accessed by a teacher associated with that student. The teacher may then prepare reports or summaries of the data, e.g. for the student and/or parents. In this way, the Data Profile on the Platform serves as a digital notebook for the teacher, similar to but more advanced than a paper notebook that a teacher may use to keep track of the in-class activities and preferences of the student. An act to give others those digital notes/data, or information derived from them, is done by choice and with consent of the teacher through the Account, and is subject to the terms of this Agreement.

This is one illustrative example of many, provided here to explain the relevant difference between Accounts and Data Profiles. 

Information that may directly identify you (Personal Data)

This section relates to Personally Identifying Information (PII) and other data that may directly identify you (“Personal Data”), as well as our mechanisms designed to collect Personal Data. We generally collect Personal Data when you supply information, for instance when registering to become a Member of our Site or Platform or when onboarding classrooms if you are a school district. Personal Data may include:

• Account Info, e.g. name, email address, postal address, phone number, and sometimes social security number or EIN
• Payment Info, e.g. credit card number, billing & shipping address, bank wire info
• Password, e.g. stored securely as part of initial registration, or in the Account information of a Member
• Date of Birth
• Private Messages

Information that may not directly identify you (General Data)

This section relates to information that may not personally identify you (“General Data”), and to our mechanisms for collecting General Data. Examples of General Data include:

Information that you supply directly:

• General biographical information, e.g. gender, age, city, and general notes
• Clinical information that you supply, e.g. whether a person has autism; history of treatment, symptoms, genetics, clinical assessments, IEP goals, etc
• Images, e.g. photographs, video, audio, and other recordings (supplied by you)
• Individual and aggregated survey responses
• Information shared via free-text fields, e.g. on a support forum, signup forms for our mailing list or research studies, job applications, treatment evaluations, social media feeds, surveys, annotations, etc. (Note: Because processing of information supplied by you in such fields may be automatic, it will be treated as General Data even if there is a chance that it may identify you.)
• Connections to other people on the Site or Platform, e.g. fellow Members, invited members of an education or care team, mentors, feeds, subscriptions.

Information that we derive from your usage of the Site or Platform (while you use them or while in the background):

• Progress on our education games, e.g. game scores, game elements interacted with, achievements, levels, high scores, etc.
• Usage Information, e.g. dates, times, location, device or browser ID, features or pages used, touchscreen taps and swipes, etc.
• Images, e.g. photographs, video, audio, and other recordings (collected during usage)
• Sensor information, e.g. device data from accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, radar, sonar, and other sensors
• Physiological measures, e.g. heart rate variability, breathing dynamics, blinkrate, etc., for instance to help adjust the games if players seem stressed
• Tracking data: In some cases, we collect information through cookies, pixel tags, email tracking, and similar methods that use unique identifiers

Independently of the Site or Platform we may directly communicate with you and you may elect to share information with us. For instance you may speak to or email us about yourself or another person or you may share a document such as an IEP report or student behavior characteristics. We consider such communications to be outside of the Site or Platform. Also, we consider such communications as carrying with them your direct consent by virtue of your intentionally taking the action of communicating with us. We treat such information in its entirety as General Data. As explained elsewhere herein, we treat all data with respect and care.

We use digital best-practices to protect your data

Akiva uses advanced, modern data privacy methods in order to secure your data. Your information is kept encrypted when being transmitted from the mobile or wearable devices used by our Platform to our secure data stores in the cloud. Your information is also kept encrypted when transmitted from our web-based Account interfaces to our secure data stores in the cloud.

While no method of electronic storage or transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, and thus we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your data, we take great precaution to assure data security. Our secure data stores in the cloud use only those cloud-based services that are certified as “HIPAA-eligible”, meaning that they are inherently secure and dependable to the level required by the HIPAA law that governs official medical records. Akiva does not conform to the HIPAA law per se (see the HIPAA section), yet we take your data privacy very seriously and thus use the types of services that many HIPAA-covered medical providers use to guard their data. 

Why and how we use General Data

In addition to serving the individual needs of our Members, Akiva is interested in better understanding the end-user experience and improving our services, for everyone in our global ecosystem.

Akiva may provide General Data, in individual and aggregate format, to Partners for use in scientific research and research on the preferences and behaviors of consumers. When providing this information to Partners, Akiva provides General Data, not data collected as Personal Data, except as noted in the section about Personal Data. When providing this information to Partners, Akiva will assure that each Partner has a privacy policy, and is made aware of our privacy policy as articulated by this Agreement from time to time.

Akiva may also periodically ask Members to complete short surveys about their experiences (including questions about products and services). Survey responses may be analyzed, combined with other General Data, and shared with and/or provided to Partners. Member participation in these surveys is not required, and refusal to do so will not impact a Member’s access to the Site or the Platform.

How and why we use Personal Data

As with General Data, Akiva aims to use Personal Data in support of our mission to ensure that every individual on autistic spectrum disorder or with special needs has an affordable access to the educational system that enables them to develop their unique abilities to succeed and thrive. Therefore our primary objectives for the data are refinement of the Platform and Site, and generating new knowledge about the learning patterns for the individuals with special needs. Personal Data will not be automatically shared with, sold to, or displayed for other Members or Partners. In particular, Personal Data will not be sold to Partners or other third parties for use in marketing or advertising.

Personal Data will be retained for as long as is required to fulfill the purposes set forth herein. We will comply with written requests that are lawfully made to remove your data, to the extent specified by law and to the extent possible to remove from our servers and research data pools.

Illustrative instances where Personal Data may be used include, but are not limited to, the following:

• If we have your permission, your email address may be used to send you notifications, including research-study invitations, newsletters, and direct notifications. You may change this setting by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of emails sent to large groups, or in some cases by changing settings in your Account if you are registered as a Member.
• For critical updates such as account password changes, and for information we deem important to send to your attention, you may be contacted regardless of account settings. We are committed to being respectful of your time with such notifications.
• If you explicitly opt in for this, we may share your Personal Data with a Partner (for instance, co-registration with a non-profit organization, or cross-registration for a cutting-edge clinical research study at a local university).
• If you agree to participate in a media interview (as arranged by Akiva), Akiva will share your contact information (e.g. name, email, telephone) with the reporter for the purpose of scheduling and conducting an interview.
• We may share Personal Data if we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a law or an official request from law enforcement.
• We may share Personal Data if obligated to do so in connection with the sale, merger, bankruptcy, sale of assets, or reorganization of Akiva.
• We may share Personal Data with Partners who are contractually engaged in providing us routine professional services, or who are collaborating on useful research we believe to be well-intentioned, if they have a privacy policy in place at that time that states that they will safeguard PII such as they will receive from us.
• Personal data may be used to guide our own scientific research and our development of new products and services that may assist you or others similar to you, although the Personal Data will not be distributed as part of those products and services.
• Personal data may be used by us to contact you from time to time.
• Where Akiva is required by mandatory law to retain your Personal Data longer or where your Personal Data are required for Akiva to assert or defend against legal claims, Akiva will retain your Personal Data until the end of the relevant retention period or until the claims in question have been settled.

External publication of data

In order to produce general knowledge about learning patterns and predict the best results, Akiva may need to conduct several studies to produce a type of evidence, recommended by worldwide researchers. Akiva is committed to follow the best practices of the professional research community, for instance publishing our results in peer-reviewed research journals for the community to inspect. 

Your data will not be published in peer-reviewed research journals unless you have explicitly gone through an informed-consent process for one of our approved and considered research studies.

The research that we will potentially publish in peer-reviewed journals is conducted under strict ethical and regulatory guidelines and supervision of an internationally compliant and accredited supervisory body known as an Institutional Review Board (IRB). Akiva research will be controlled by an external IRB, with accreditation and is continuously reviewed and controlled by a strict application review process and subsequent audits. Control includes all aspects of the research, study design, recruitment procedures for human participants, informed consent of human participants, data privacy and security, record-keeping, reporting, and publication. Our research data and records are kept permanently, under data retention and protection procedures that are stipulated under IRB and related regulations, and are audited every year by full-time and certified staff members of the IRB organization during on-site audit visits. In these ways, data destined for publication in peer-reviewed journals are acquired and kept under strict, international ethical regulations.

Akiva does not conduct any animal research.

FERPA: Not student education data; Not used for marketing

Akiva does not use the data we collect from schools for marketing to students or to their parents. We do not sell the data to third parties in order for them to use for marketing to students or to their parents.

Our understanding is that the FERPA rule relates to many specific categories of information mostly centered around student education data.

The following are some categories of student data that our Platform and Site do NOT collect (unless a Member inputs them into freeform text fields):

• Standardized test scores
• Grades
• Other academic scores and assessments
• Approval to graduate
• Bus assignment
• Other transport data
• Attendance
• Disciplinary records
• Course enrollment data
• Class and elective enrollment
• Extracurricular activities
• Sports activities
• Teacher identity (except teachers using the Platform)
• Income status indicators
• Living situations
• Discounted or free lunch status
• Religious affiliation
• Political affiliation
• Criminal records
• Family composition
• Text messages
• ELL status
• Student ID number
• Classwork
• Homework

Again, the above is a list of illustrative categories of information that our Site and Platform do NOT collect.

California privacy rights including DNT

If you are a California resident, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits you to request information regarding the disclosure of your Personal Information by Akiva to a third party, for the third party’s direct marketing purposes. Akiva does not make such disclosures, and therefore we believe that we are exempt from these reporting requirements.

Your browser may offer you a “Do Not Track” (DNT) option, which allows you to signal to operators of websites and web applications and services that you do not wish such operators to track certain of your online activities, over time and across different websites. Akiva currently does not respond to DNT browser signals or mechanisms.

Not a HIPAA-covered entity. No PHI.

Akiva is not a healthcare provider. We do not maintain a doctor-patient relationship with our Members or other users, and we do not claim to cure, treat, or diagnose diseases. Also, we are not a clearinghouse for medical data from other healthcare providers, nor are we a health insurance provider. It is our understanding that these are the legal tests to determine whether an entity is covered by the HIPAA privacy law, and therefore it is our understanding that Akiva does not fall under the jurisdiction of the HIPAA law and is not a “HIPAA-covered entity”.

In this contexts, information that we collect is not considered PHI (Protected Health Information) since PHI refers not to the type of information but to whether it is held by an entity covered by the HIPAA law.

(To help understand this: Your friends may know that you have a diagnosis, or you may share that information in a Meetup, but neither Meetup, Inc. nor your friends are placed under Federal control suddenly because they have that information. In contrast, your doctor who generated that diagnosis is.)

Regardless of HIPAA or PHI restrictions, we are respectful and cautious with your data.

Other privacy matters

Akiva cannot guarantee the identity of any Member with whom you may interact in the course of using the Site or Platform, or who may have access to your General Data by using the Site or Platform. Additionally, we cannot guarantee the authenticity of any data that other Members may provide about themselves.

Akiva will cooperate with police to the extent required by law. However, if data contained within the volume of data we collect happen to indicate or suggest the commission of a crime, we cannot guarantee that the crime will be investigated by the police or by us.

Risks and benefits

While our goals including empowering people with special needs, and helping better understand how individuals develop their learning patterns to become independent, happy, and successful contributors to the society, there are no guaranteed benefits to using this Site or Platform. However, mindfully keeping track of personal achievements, well-being, treatments, and symptoms has long been shown to be generally helpful in improving overall health. 

We are not aware of significant risks to your providing data via the Site or Platform. There is a possibility that you may feel uncomfortable sharing information. In using the Site or Platform, you are free to skip any non-required questions or data fields that make you feel uncomfortable. You are also free to stop using the Site or Platform at any time.

Updates to this Agreement

We reserve the right to modify this Agreement at any time by posting an amended version of the Agreement on this website. We encourage you to review this site periodically for any updates. We indicate the effective date of this Agreement at the top of the Agreement. (Small edits to amend typographical errors or sentence flow will not necessarily generate a new version and effective date.)

You have no obligation to use our Site or Platform

Using the Site or Platform is elective and optional, as is becoming a Member.

If you are not comfortable with our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, or other policies at any time, you are free to decline to use our Site and Platform, and/or to withdraw from Membership. We would of course be interested to hear from you if you care to share your reasons since we are committed to adding value and improving how we empower people, but you have no obligation to communicate with us in this way.

Questions about the Privacy Policy

If you have questions, comments, or requests related to our Privacy Policy or your data, please contact us:

Email:   copyright@akiva.ai

Postal Mail:

Akiva Systems, LLC
Attn: Privacy Issues
1541 Ocean Avenue, Suite 200
Santa Monica, CA 90401