Getting to Know Mike May

On this Change Makers episode, I’m talking to Mike May. He’s well-known throughout the field of blindness, he’s quite the athlete, as he has set Paralympic records, and holds a world-record. He’s also a business executive, and considered the "Godfather of Indoor Navigation," and APH's Navigation Technology Advisor. 

On this Podcast (In Order of Appearance)

• Narrator
• Sara Brown, APH Public Relations Manager
• Mike May, APH Technology Navigation Advisor

Additional Links

• APH Looking Forward: Our Braille Technology Roadmap
• Enchanted Hills Camp Overview
• At First Sight IMBD
• Crashing Through: The Extraordinary True Story of the Man Who Dared to See
• Mike May and Crashing Through on Good Morning America
• About Mike May
• AbledTV-Mike May-The Challenge Of Seeing Again.mo

Transcript

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Narrator 0:00

Welcome to Changemakers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown 0:15

Hello and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APH's Public Relations Manager, Sara Brown, and on this episode I'm talking to Mike May, have you heard of him? He's well known throughout the field of blindness. He's also quite the athlete and has set Paralympic records. He also holds a world record. He's also a business executive and considered the godfather of indoor navigation, and I'm happy to call him a colleague here at APH, as he's also the Navigation Technology Advisor. Hello Mike, and welcome to Change Makers.

Mike May 0:47

Great to be here.

Sara Brown 0:50

Okay, so first, thanks. First, you are new at APH, but well known in the world and in the field. Tell us about yourself and what you do here at APH.

Mike May 1:01

Yeah, I've certainly been around APH for a long time, and I've been there numerous times. I've spoken at , uh, annual meeting. I'm attended, I did some collaborative projects with APH around PC Maps, which was a , a Virtual Windows , um, Exploration Map , uh, from Sierra Group. Uh, we had the Miniguide that we did together, so we've had a lot of collaborations over the years, so I'm glad to actually be part of the team now and, and getting to know people that have to do with , uh, orientation, mobility and navigations. And it's amazing how many products and , um, kinds of services that APH already has in that realm.

Sara Brown 1:44

And how long have you been in the field of blind and low vision?

Mike May 1:48

Well, I made a conscious decision when I finished graduate school in International Affairs that I was going to try to go into some areas that weren't as well, charted as others. And so I did a lot of exploration in , um, banking and , um, in tech technology. And after I'd worked for some big companies for several years, I spun off with some friends and we started a laser turntable company before CDs were entrenched. And that really gave me a taste for startup companies and new projects and the fact that , uh, if you were smart and you worked hard and you were innovative, you could really , uh, go out and create some pretty amazing things and in a , in a way that's really a lot about adaptive technology. It takes a lot of creativity and tenacity. Uh , so I worked outside the blindness field for the first 15 years of my career, and then I got into it in the early nineties with adaptive computers where I had a company. I started in Ashland, Oregon with a friend, and then I went on to RK Stone , which is now part of what's Sparrow , and eventually launched my own company, Sendero Group in 2000 to work on accessible GPS. And that has not been the only part of my , uh, professional development and, and focus , but it's been a big part of it.

Sara Brown 3:19

So, as Navigation Technology Advisor, can you talk about some of the pro Product Roadmaps that, that here at APH that, that you're working on?

Mike May 3:29

Well, part of creating a roadmap is looking at where you've been. And so that's been my first approach , uh, at , uh, APH. There's so many products, hundreds, and I want to know what things have to do with orientation and mobility, teaching, navigation , uh, navigation tools . So I'm looking at that and there's quite a few already at APH and certainly the last four years that I spent at Good Maps where we've been developing indoor navigation, that's a big part of a push from APH that came from nearby explorer. And so I'm , I'm thinking about that kind of advanced technology, but I wanna know what other tools are in the toolbox already and let's bring those to the forefront, figure out which ones to better present to people. Cuz a a difficult thing for a teacher or a student or a parent of a newly blind child is "what do I get?" "What do I use?" "What do I help my kid with?" And I think APH can can do that, and certainly with some of the products that already has. And at the same time then looking at what are some of the cool things that could be done that, that haven't been done or haven't been fully addressed. And there's , uh, there's all kinds of cool things both in navigation technology or addressing teaching of , uh, the sweeping cane technique. How do you, how do you impact that maybe with a , a wristband or an Apple watch or, you know , you have sensors in those things so they can help you learn more about what you're doing. So I'm , uh, I'm looking forward to digging into those new products with the , the team that's already doing that at APH and giving my two cents on how they're done and, and maybe contributing to the design if we decide some of those should move forward.

Sara Brown 5:17

Wow. And I always like to hear, you know, my, my interviewees, I love to hear, you know, just their, their beginnings. Do you wanna talk a bit about, you know, where you're from, your child, what your childhood was like, what you, what you were when you were a little kid, what you liked to do, talk about yourself?

Mike May 5:34

Sure. I , uh, was blinded at age three from a chemical explosion totally blind. And as the doctors told my mother, "it's not likely your son will live ," um, she was made the point, well, I'm, I'm , I'm grateful that , uh, the worst that came out of this was the fact that you're blind. And so that really was the underpinnings of growing up, being grateful for being blind as opposed to maybe somebody loses sight later in life and they're , uh, they're resentful and they have , it is a much bigger challenge than that . They have that attitude that "you're lucky to be blind." So that , um, was really part of , um, getting involved in sports at an early age. I, I tried everything with the kids at , in , uh, school flag football and finding ways to modify that. And then , uh, of course wrestling was something more conventional. A lot of blind people had done that. So no real innovation there. But then when I got introduced to skiing when I was 27-years-old. I really caught the bug because it was such a visual sport and you had to have a lot of adaptations, namely a guide in order to go safely down the hill. Uh, then I got into racing and para paralympic competition and one gold medals. And , uh, the culmination of that was when I realized that speed skiing, which was being created in the mainstream , uh, in the , uh, early eighties , uh, that there are no gates, there are no poles in the course the way you have in giant slalom and slalom. So I thought if you could remove those poles, then I would be on equal footing, so to speak, with sighted people. And that was largely the case. Speed skiing was about find a steep mountain that's really smoothly prepared , uh, train , have the right equipment, which is super long skis, a helmet. I had radio so my guide could guide me, which is not what I would use in normal , uh, downhill skiing. But in speed skiing, the guide didn't go in front of me the way we had done , uh, for all other skiing. They went behind me for some technical reasons. And , uh, in Les Arcs, France, I set the world record for a totally blind person at 65 miles an hour. And as I always say, if , if you wanna set a record and hold a record, pick something that nobody else really cares about doing. Uh , that's what I did.

Sara Brown 8:03

( Laughing) Love to hear that. "If you, find some record and break it and that nobody cares about..." Well, you know, I, I can't wait to hear more about that. But you did mention briefly about how you got into sports. So what other sports did you try? Were you wrestling, were you doing tennis? Were you, you know, were , what other sports did you play or or attempt before you settled on skiing is my thing.

Mike May 8:28

Yeah. Um, well, some of it was that one , when you're in school, you can join teams. And so there's that available once you get out of school. Then there's, things are more of an individual sport. You know, tennis might be that. Golf might be that. Uh, I played a lot of basketball. I had a hoop in the back porch of our house. My dad was a basketball player, my brother played. And so , um, we tried different ways to do that. At the Enchanted Hills Camp for the Blind, we built , um, a basketball court that had five spots. One at the free throw line, one further out, and , uh, three others that were one foot square pads in the cement of the court. It was an outdoor court. Then there was a buzzer that was connected to those pads behind the hoop. And so the blind people at the camp would learn to be really good shots from those five places. So we'd play three on three basketball and with no sighted people or sighted in instruction. And you'd race around, dribble around the court, find those spots, and then take a shot from there and get pretty good at it. And that was one of my favorite times in, in playing basketball. Of course, that wasn't available on the school grounds, but did teach me a lot about playing basketball. And I, I did manage to play with my friends , uh, on , on the school court as well , uh, tandem cycling, that was an easy one. Uh, did a fair amount of that, a bit of that. Uh , I was on the board of the U. S. Association of Blind Athletes and , uh, tried a little bit of gold ball . Uh , so I tinkered around in a lot of sports and , uh, now as a , you know , an older adult, trying to find the right word for how to say that, because , um, the , uh, skiing is still something I feel really excited about being able to get out and do. And , uh, the challenging part is finding a driver and finding a guide and getting to the slope that , uh, makes it maybe more challenging for a blind person than a cider person.

Sara Brown 10:32

Talk about your first time when you gave, when you moved over to skiing. What was that like?

Mike May 10:39

Well, my friends had tried to talk me into skiing for a , a long time in college at UC Davis, and friends went up all the time, but I, I was busy, I had a lot of things going on. I, I played guitar and was in , uh, a couple of different groups. And so I had that you could only have the time for so many things. And , uh, I just hadn't tried skiing, but I , I was 27, a friend of mine who has really been at the core of a lot of , um, my milestones in life. Uh , guy named Rob Reese , uh, who was where we started the Laser Turntable Company together, he got me to go up with him skiing. And I was introduced at Kirkwood to Ron Savio who'd started a blind skiing program there. And once I went out and spent a day or two on the slope, just fi figuring out how to ski, then I was hooked. Eventually then got involved in finding out better guiding techniques. Cuz they used to mostly guide with the guide behind, cause that's easier on the guide, but it's not as effective, particularly when you're skiing faster. Skiing in bumps, ski with a guide in front was better. So we spent a lot of time refining that technique. And I had the good fortune of having the same guide for probably 20 years , uh, in our competitions. And usually when we went to a race, other people were lucky if they'd had the same guide for one or two years. And here we'd been working together for 20 years. So it gave us a , a distinct advantage over our competition.

Sara Brown 12:13

Okay . So you, you're, you're getting, you found a sport, you're getting really into it. And how did you work your way up where you just was , were the Paralympics, the 1984 Paralympics, how did that come to be? Were you just winning and crushing com local competitions or regionals and worldwide competitions to go to the Paralympics and, and what was that like competing in those games?

Mike May 12:40

Well , it was one of those domino effect things where , um, somebody told me about a race in California and the, the prize for that local competition was you got sent to the national competition. So I did that. I was only a year or two into skiing, so I was surprised. Then I went to the national competition in Ironwood, Michigan, skiing at nine degrees below zero. Lovely. And , uh, I , I did well at that competition and the prize for winning that from U.S.A.B.A. was to be on the first international team for downhill skiing internationally, which was in Switzerland in 1982. And when we went to that competition , uh, my guide Ron was in front of me and every other competitor had the guide behind. We had a distinct advantage and we won three gold medals very significantly. Uh, so that was exciting to win. And all the pomp and circumstance in the hospitality in Switzerland and the international interaction of everything, that was pretty amazing. And then they had in 1984, another world winner games , cuz that's what it used to be, be called before the Paralympics. And at that time there was a lot of political lobbying going on to make this competition part of the regular Olympics as well . And so 1984 as the first transition somewhat to that happening, and we went and competed and everybody had switched to the front guiding technique. So my own technique , uh, caught up with me literally. And , uh, I took three bronze medals. I lost to a , a Canadian Rod Hershey and , um, and Chris Orr , uh, Carl Prine , these were some of the other people. And you might hear this podcast. And I remember these guys , uh, two of them beat me. And , um, I thought, well that's really a measure of success that I influenced how things were done. And the cool thing that came out of that was that the regular Olympics were in Sarajevo in 1984 Winter Olympics. And they invited the disabled amputees to come do a demo competition at that event. And we tried to lobby for blind people to go and they said, you know, last minute, we just don't have enough beds and logistics to deal with a blind person in their guide. So maybe next time. So Ron and I rented a car and we drove to Sarajevo , which was, I don't know , 22 hours away or something. And a lot of complications in doing that. I had my c eye dog, Ricky at the time, and we were being held up at the border and then at hotels and eventually we got to Syria bowl and we had no place to stay and no tickets. And I convinced some people that I was part of , uh, K C B S radio in San Francisco and we got a press pass. And uh, eventually when the amputees competed, we were on the slopes to interview them and to document their first ever demo at the Olympics. And when they were done skiing, Ron said, Hey, let's just take a run. And there was nobody there at the starting gate to stop us. So we jumped into the starting gate, we went down the mountain. I was petrified, absolutely petrified. The last thing I wanted to fall in front of everybody, but we came across the finish line with , uh, Yugoslavian soldiers , uh, pointing guns at us and a lot of cheers and people wondering, what the heck is this all about? And uh, and comes my guide screaming at the top of his lungs, turn left, turn right and uh , stop <laugh>. And uh, so we uninvited were the, the first at a demonstration of a blind skier in the Olympics.

Sara Brown 16:37

Oh my gosh . So you're already making waves and making a name for yourself. Oh my gosh.

Mike May 16:44

Yeah. That was a blast.

Sara Brown 16:46

<laugh> Good times. Now for, you've said a couple of times during our conversation, the guide in the front versus the guide in the back. Why, why, what's the difference and why is the guide in the front better when it comes to skiing?

Mike May 17:04

Well, it's better for the blind skier, it's harder for the guide. So somebody who's just a newly trained guide, they're having a , a real challenge on their hands cuz they're trying to figure out what's the right terrain, how do I avoid people and trees and poles. So they wanna be looking ahead. So if the skier's in front of them, that's easy. They're looking ahead, they're evaluating all of these moving pieces and they can guide, you know, let turn left, turn right, but not with a lot of precision because skiing is more precise than just a little bit left and a little bit right. There's a lot of nuances to, to how you, you need to proceed. And if the blind steer's behind the guide, once the guide learns how to do that and how to look back and to look forward and that takes some extra training and experience, then the blind skier can hear the guy's skis If you ski close and that's the key, you want to be five feet, no more than 10 feet behind them so you can hear their skis. And that gives you a lot of information that you can't get verbally when you hit ice, you hear the skis scrape when you, when there's a bump, the the guide's voice shake. Yeah . You hear a bounce in their voice and that's information that they just can't verbally call out cuz there's only room for so much information, turn left , turn right, bump stop, and so forth. And , um, it , it does take some time for both the skier and the guide and that's why skiing with the same guide is off . It is very helpful. If you go to one of these blind ski programs around the country, chances are they're gonna default to the guide going behind it because it's the first time you might have skied together. And that means there's a little bit more pressure on both of you to get acquainted before you do something more complicated.

Sara Brown 18:53

Wow, okay . I didn't even think about that, but I don't know anything about skiing. If you , I've, I've seen it, I've watched the Olympics and the downhill skiing and Cross Country and all of that, but I did not take into all of that. That you're listening . Yeah . To their , their voice. If you hear it "bump," you know, the bounce and the scraping on the ice. So you're listening for all of that to sort of tell you what to prepare for and what to brace for.

Mike May 19:18

And I , Sara, I know a lot of , uh, blind people use radio, so the guide might have a , a radio and then a speaker's on the blind person, or sometimes they'll put , um, an amplified speaker on the back of the guide. I'm not a big fan of those things because if I have an earpiece or a radio that's near me and the guide's talking to me , then I can't hear their skis as well. I, I can't hear their body position as well. So as much as I love technology for so many things I've not found in skiing that it helps me.

Sara Brown 19:51

Wow. I didn't even think about that either, so, but I, I I get exactly what you're saying. That makes a hundred percent sense. Wow. Okay. So you've come down the mountain, you've got guns pointed at you <laugh> , but did , did you not show them your bronze medals?

Mike May 20:09

<laugh> ? Well, we tried to , we tried to convince them ahead of time that we should be in included officially. Uh, but they weren't, they weren't having it for the reasons that I explained. Uh, 1988, they had the first Paralympics in Calgary and , uh, John Novotny was one of the, the , the well known us blind skiers, a cross country skier that went to that. Um, and uh, that we went and observed and got involved with the media. And at that point we're sort of transitioning from competitor to , uh, supportive celebrity person. And , and then a lot of the scheme that I've done since has been at competitions with , uh, Olympic skiers, Tamara McKinney, Franz Weber, and some of these other people. They would invite me to , um, international events and I'd get to ski a demo run. Uh, well , I think one of my favorite was , uh, the John Denver Classic for a couple years they held in , uh, heavenly Valley Tahoe area. And besides John Denver, there was , uh, Christopher Cross and a lot of movie stars. And we got to ski with these people and , uh, compete with them just on a , on a fun basis. Uh , that was really great, just being part of that and bringing attention to blind skiing, which today is , uh, a lot of people do it and , uh, there's a lot of opportunities for it, and I think that comes from myself and lots of others who've , uh, promoted it and kind of pioneered the way in the past.

Sara Brown 21:39

Well , okay. And you also mentioned you are a world record holder for downhill skiing, going at one hundred? Or I was gonna say 165 miles... Going at 65 miles per hour. Talk about that. When did you do that?

Mike May 21:56

Uh, we did that in 1988. And the, the challenge with that was that when I went to speed ski competitions alongside the sighted people in the U.S., the insurance companies wouldn't let me compete. The idea of a blind person going at high speeds, which was not thrilling to them, all the liability stuff. So then we said, "well, let's go to Canada to Whistler, maybe they'll let us do it there. And it always came down to the last minute, somebody would find out, they'd say, oh, no, no, no, no, you're not doing it. And so we got to train a bit with the side of people, but we didn't get to compete. So finally somebody said, well, they don't care about insurance as much in Europe, and this place in les Arcs has a really wide open , uh, runout. So once the , the way the speed scheme works is you go to the top of a steep slope, you get into a tuck, kind of a tight ball, so you're aerodynamic, you go down the slope and there's about a hundred meters where there's a timing light that starts when you come in and stops when you go out. And it take , takes your peak speed during that a hundred meters. And when you come out, you have to stand up. So picture what it would be like if you were in a car and it was a sunroof and you stood up, the blowback from the wind is really significant. So there's a technique to how you stand up and you don't get blown over, but it does happen. Or if you catch an edge, you might fall. So you might slide for, I don't know , a quarter of a mile if there was room. And in les Arcs there was room. So the worst that could happen to me really was that I would slide and maybe get some road rash, snow rash from sliding, but I wouldn't slam into a tree. And that , um, that made that particular course on les Arcs really wonderful. The unfortunate side of it was our goal was to break a hundred miles an hour because the able-bodied world champions were skiing 135 miles an hour. And Franz Weber was our coach and he was one of the record holders, and he thought we could break a hundred, no problem. What happened was a storm came in and we'd done training and we'd hit 65 miles an hour in our training, and then the storm came in and with fluffy snow on the course, you couldn't , uh, do any competition. And this went on for days and eventually , uh, I had to catch my flight and fly back to work in California. So we never did get to do the full course at , uh, top speed and break a hundred miles an hour. So I was actually dis um, I was actually disappointed with my results, but you know, in the end it was still pretty cool.

Sara Brown 24:43

Wow. So you're disappointed you didn't get to try for a hu over a hundred, but you ended up breaking a record anyway. Wow.

Mike May 24:50

Yeah, and we can , we can say over a hundred kilometers an hour, so that'll have to do?

Sara Brown 24:54

A hundred kilometers. Okay, nice, nice. And you've made such a big mark on the sports world . How does that feel? Do you have any feelings about that?

Mike May 25:02

Well, there's lots of people doing cool stuff and I'm, I'm glad to have been part of it. And , uh, you know, we all make our marks in different ways and it's, it's teamwork. It , it takes more than one person. I've been fortunate to get a lot of visibility in past years about , uh, the skiing competition in particular , uh, being invited to the White House to be recognized , um, for that , uh, twice, once with Ronald Reagan, after the Sarajevo Olympics, and being acknowledged by Ronald Reagan in the presentation to the able-bodied Olympic team. That was, those were significant words. And then in 2010, when I went back as a representative of the White House under the Obama administration, being in the Map Room with the Obama's and the Biden's and celebrating , uh, those accomplishments, that all brings attention to something that I hope opens up the doors for others and, and inspires them to get out there. And say, "hey, I wanna try that too."

Sara Brown 26:01

Looking back over the course of everything you've done, whether it be in the professional field or the athletic field, what would you say to your younger self?

Mike May 26:13

Well, of course you learn a lot of these things and look back in retrospect and say, "oh, I wish I'd known that." Um, I feel fortunate that my ability to deal with alternative tools and techniques was really enhanced by becoming blind. So if you wanna look at the, the , the bright side of things, the "silver cloud," the "lemonade outta lemons," whatever. Starting from age three, when I went blind, I had to figure out how to do things differently. And people taught me that my mother was an amazing mentor and teacher and because she had five kids, she couldn't , uh, overly protect me by a few virtue of too many little ones around as a single mom. So all of that played into me having to fend for myself, advocate for myself, innovate. And that quality was probably the greatest tool that I could have as a blind person cuz my mother's gone since 2007. Uh, I have to figure things out on my own and , uh, with other people, not just on my own. But that capability really came from becoming blind at that age and then having that curiosity flame fanned by people around me, teachers and parents and colleagues and organizations.

Sara Brown 27:37

Now there was a book written about you right? "Crashing through...?"

Mike May 27:44

Yeah, yeah. When I, how about that <laugh>? Well, you know, this was a , a whole other episode in my life in 1999. I just , through happenstance I met a doctor and he said , "hey, there's a new technique, there's a stem cell transplant." He looked at my eye and he said, "maybe you'd be a candidate." And one thing led to another and I had this , uh, stem cell transplant. Which rep replaced the burn tissue in my eye from the explosion and then a cornea transplant. And voila , I got some vision. Uh , there was a whole learning experience about how to use that vision, how to integrate it with blindness, because it wasn't as though I just went from being totally blind to driving a car and reading a book. There was a lot more around it. It turned out that I was good at seeing colors and motion, but I had no detailed perception and no depth perception. So this made for a rather complicated way of dealing with the world. And after about five years, I learned that integrating my blindness skills and my low vision skills, that was the technique, which when you think about it, is what we're doing in this world. We're always integrating the tools that work for us and we're experimenting and learning about the different tools, what works in a given situation. And there's no two things that are the same for every blind person. There's no one tool that does everything all of the time. And of course things are expensive. So you gotta consider the affordability of the alternative tools and techniques. So vision became one of my tools and I'm still learning to deal with it to this day as it happens. Yesterday I had cataract surgery because over the years a cataract has built up, which means now there's a slight opacity, a blockage in my lens, and it's a standard operation for a lot of people, but it wasn't for me. It was very complicated and somewhat risky. And I had to make the same decision I made in 2000, which was, am I curious to see if it'll help? Cuz I didn't really need any more vision. I'm fine with my combination of things. I was fine being totally blind. So I was just curious and decided to go, okay , I'm gonna try it. Well, today there's all this new light coming into my eye, it's super bright. There's kind of things floating around in my view, and I'm a little concerned like, oh my gosh, my brain's now gonna have to adjust to this new level of vision. And in the end, it may not help at all, but it did satisfy my curiosity. I would've wondered if I didn't do the cataract surgery, well what, what might have happened if I hadn't gone ahead and done it? So that's been a whole adventure and that led into the crashing through book being written about me. It wasn't the only part of my story that was told, but it was, it was the impetus to it. And that , um, became a bestseller in 2007. And we've had , um, four movie contracts since, and they're still in process. We just got , um, signed an option for another 18 months on a potential movie , uh, two days ago. Uh , the, the , the , the adventures continue and it may or may not ever turn into something the on the big screen.

Sara Brown 31:09

Wow, that is so cool . So bronze medal winning, world record holder, bestselling book subject, future movie subject. How cool is that? That is really remarkable. When you went from, you said you were completely blind and then you get the, the operations on your eyes and now you're seeing, you said you could see some colors and shapes. Psychologically and mentally? What was that like going, because I know blindness is a spectrum, so I don't know what you were seeing before, but now you're seeing color and you're seeing shapes. What is, what was that like?

Mike May 31:56

Well, this was the, this was the big story. This is why I ended up on Dateline and Good Morning America and all these other things. Yeah . Because there were only 20 documented cases of people getting restored vision after long-term blindness. Uh, it happens in developing countries where people have had cataracts, but those things aren't documented. So all of a sudden the media is interested in hearing my story. "What's it like to see your wife for the first time and your kids?" And I , I'm, I had to say to them, "I know my wife and my kids better than anybody. So seeing them was no big mystery." Just because I could see them now to some extent, not fully, I couldn't recognize their faces, but okay, "I can see blonde hair, blue eyes," a a few things like that that were exciting, but it wasn't life changing the way the media made it out to be. But it did start , uh, a very interesting conversation from the standpoint of somebody who could articulate what was happening as I was learning to see. And I worked a lot with a vision scientist and here 23 years later, I'm still working with the vision scientists at , uh, University of Washington and a lot of others that came before that about how does the brain adjust to , uh, acquired vision after going blind at age three. And it's very complicated. Uh, and it's in the book and it's in nature, neuroscience and a lot of other places where the science of this transition has been explained. A lot of it is about setting expectations. So the people that had had this kind of restorative treatment before me, there were some pretty negative cases , uh, where , where people committed suicide because they expected life to all of a sudden get better. There was a a Val Kilmer movie, "At First Sight," and what was different about the experience of those blind people in , in their restoration was they expected that having sight would fix things and it doesn't fix anything about your job. Mm-hmm <affirmative> your relationships, your , you know, buying a house, all these complicated things that people have to deal with in life vision isn't going to help with those things. In fact, it interferes, because what I experienced was an overwhelming amount of constant input of stuff and things coming at me where I actually had to close my eyes and tune out because my brain was overwhelmed by this. Something like 70% of your brain's information comes from the visual cortex. That's a lot to cope with when you haven't had it before.

Sara Brown 34:38

You know, I've also, that hearing that makes me think also when people get the cochlear implants and..

Mike May 34:46

Same thing. Same.

Sara Brown 34:47

They turn them off because it's too much.

Mike May 34:50

Yep .

Sara Brown 34:51

Mike, it's been really awesome talking to you. Before I let you go, is there anything else you would like to say or share with our listeners?

Mike May 35:01

Well, I look forward to seeing people at conferences , uh, and NFB coming up. Other ones I'll be at some O&M conferences and , uh, uh, just , uh, get out there and keep exploring and sharing what you're doing so we can collectively , uh, make things better and keep 'em interesting.

Sara Brown 35:19

All right , Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on Change Makers.

Mike May 35:24

It was great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

Sara Brown 35:26

I have put links in the Show Notes to various news articles about Mike May. It's really interesting stuff. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Change Makers. I hope you have enjoyed it. As always, be sure to look for ways you can be a Changemaker this week.