{"id":641,"date":"2010-12-05T00:38:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T00:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pneumasolutions.com\/?p=641"},"modified":"2024-11-23T00:48:31","modified_gmt":"2024-11-23T00:48:31","slug":"lack-of-sight-doesnt-mean-lack-of-vision-text-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pneumasolutions.com\/sv\/lack-of-sight-doesnt-mean-lack-of-vision-text-version\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristande syn betyder inte brist p\u00e5 vision Textversion"},"content":{"rendered":"

On November 12th of this year, we posted an audio version of a keynote speech I gave at the Mid-Atlantic ACB Conference on our\u00a0Serotalk blog and podcast<\/a>. While many folks heard it and gave some great feedback, it was still about an hour long and\u00a0who wants to hear me talk for that long?\u00a0<\/a>For those of you that would rather read the speech without my trips down memory lane, I have posted it here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope that it will inspire you as much as meeting and interacting with many of you readers, customers, and friends has inspired me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lack of Sight Doesn\u2019t Mean Lack of Vision
By Mike Calvo<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to tell you some of the highlights and lowlights of my life story, tonight. Not all of them \u2013 just a few to give you a sense of how it\u2019s possible for a blind kid, a troublemaker, pretty much written off by his teachers, can be standing here as CEO of a company that is changing the adaptive technology paradigm. It\u2019s a story that didn\u2019t start well and which isn\u2019t over yet, I hope. But it\u2019s a story of how blindness has very little to do with vision. And while this is my story, it\u2019s also a story that any blind person can live if they can dream.
School was not a great experience for me. Everyday teachers and guidance counselors would tell me to set my sights low \u2013 to find some mind-numbing work I could be trained to do, because what else was there for me? After all, \u201cI was born with a strike against me, and I would have to work twice as hard as a normal person.\u201d I didn\u2019t begin with a great deal of sight, and I gradually lost what little I did have. By the time I was 18 years of age, I had lost the last traces of my eyesight. I was blind and tired of beating my head against an establishment that didn\u2019t have my best interest at heart. This resulted in me dropping out of high school and taking to the Miami streets and club seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, I was handicapped. My goal should be to not be too big a burden on my family and society. Right? A wife? Kids? Success? No way! Maybe you\u2019ve heard this too: \u201cNo big, impossible dreams please.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With inspiration like that, many kids would just give up. But I was the ornery type, and I got angry. I\u2019d show them all. And I got mean. I did whatever I needed to do to prove to myself and to the world that I was a person you had to pay attention to. I was going to dream big and fulfill those dreams and I didn\u2019t much care who got hurt or what laws might get broken in the process. I wouldn\u2019t want anyone to emulate that early part of my life. Unfortunately, some of those early big dreams were pretty selfish and caused me to hurt many of those closest to me. Fortunately, somewhere along in there Jesus came into my life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What? Relax. I\u2019m not going to preach at you. I\u2019m just telling you how it was for me. I\u2019m a firm believer that when you\u2019re ready to accept the Lord in your life, he\u2019ll be there. You don\u2019t need me selling him to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What God did was teach me to forgive both those that hurt me and myself; to redirect the energy I was putting into anger, bitterness, and rejection into doing something productive. He helped me cage my impatience. He helped me see that it wasn\u2019t \u201cme against them.\u201d It was me, finding a way to love \u201cthem\u201d and get \u201cthem\u201d to work with me to accomplish something together. It was me accepting that whether or not I liked society and its ignorance, I was getting an education from every challenge I experienced and every person I met and if I paid attention, I would discover how together we could do more than any of us could do separately. In other words, thanks to this divine intervention, I could see the world in a different light. Since then, life has been a great deal more exciting! But I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was twenty-one, I became a dad. \u201cNo more streets or clubs for Mikey.\u201d I had to be responsible. I began working in a bank, and as part of my job I needed to learn to use the computer. Due to the encouragement of Greg Luther of the Florida Division of Blind Services I quickly realized I was a pretty good teacher. So, I took on the job of teaching how to use the computer to other blind people at the bank, and later, for that vary same agency. I ultimately ended up opening my own training business. At the same time, I was indulging my love of music by doing audio production. And in the process an idea was niggling in the back of my mind. At that time, we were just getting sophisticated with tools to help blind people be productive at work and school. There was very little to help \u201cthese people\u201d enjoy the fullness of life. Sure, there were books on tape \u2013 a truly wonderful innovation; and there were news reading services by telephone. But TV, movies, the emerging Internet were all pretty much beyond reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was this huge barrier called accessibility. And those people who were working at reducing the barriers were focused on what might make a blind person productive or educated and didn\u2019t pay much attention to the things the blind person might enjoy after work or school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But man! I wanted my piece of that Internet pie! So, I joined forces with my best friend from high school and we created a product called Radio Webcaster. I even wrote my own website for the first time. It had moderate success in the mainstream community. Surprisingly, at least to me, blind people bought the product as well. It was an eye-opening experience, no pun intended, to realize that blind people everywhere were just like me. They had money to spend, and they liked to be entertained just as much as the next person. They just didn\u2019t have a product that they could buy for themselves without having to mortgage everything they had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Radio Webcaster was a great idea for its time, I knew I wanted to do something more. My vision was firmly placed on the Internet and tools to make it more accessible. With full access to the Internet blind folks could enjoy pretty much everything sighted folks could enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greg had told me that \u201cbehind the computer I am an equal.\u201d There is a cartoon, I think from the New Yorker, that shows a dog sitting at a computer and he\u2019s saying to another dog, \u201cThe cool thing is that on the Internet no one knows that you\u2019re a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the cool thing is that with the right tools, over the Internet, no one would know you were blind. You are judged by the people you interact with by what you know, what you can do, by who you really are \u2013 not by whether or not you are sighted. So, the challenge was to create those tools. Because in my mind I could see that accessibility meant equality. This was a place where the barriers had to come down and could, with a little creative thought, tumble quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What were those barriers?
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First was the computer itself. Most folks weren\u2019t necessarily skilled computer users. In fact, one survey shows a scant five percent of blind folks use computers. The greatest possible liberating and enabling tool and not even five percent of the blind population had access because of cost and training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whys were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n