Mike Calvo

Mike Calvo has been blind since birth. As a teenager he began work as a DJ in local clubs and on the radio in Miami, and that led to an interest in getting more involved in music. He opened a recording studio at the age of 18 after selling his mobile DJ and artist booking agency business. He then began remixing dance music tracks for many well known recording artists in both the English and Spanish music markets.

At the age of 21 Mike got married and decided that the music life was not the kind of life he wanted for his family, so he got a job at a bank in collections with the help of a local agency for the blind. After being at the bank for several months he asked about opportunities for future growth in the bank. The supervisor made it clear that there was no hope of advancement. This angered Mike because coming from a world where he owned his own business he was never exposed to these types of limitations.

He contacted the man who had set up his computer at the bank and explained the situation to him. The man told Mike that if he ever wanted to be equal to any other employee in a job setting he needed to learn that computer like the palm of his hand. This man spent hours of his time instructing Mike and giving him direction and later was almost single handedly responsible for helping Mike land a job as a contract trainer and job placement tech for the state of Florida.

Less than 1 year later Mike opened United Computer Consultants, a company dedicated to developing and training blind people and employers to create computer technology jobs with advancement paths for the disabled.

Shortly after opening his computer company and a store that sold electronics, Mike left the bank and proceeded to place and train over 400 blind people in jobs, in Florida and several other states and at the federal level.

In 1997 Mike began playing with the internet and using the computer to produce music. His love of music and audio sent him on a quest to find audio on the net. He then opened InHouse Radio Networks in 1999 with his high school friend. They released a product called the Radio Webcaster that allowed a person to hear audio from the internet on any FM radio in the home. The product sold well and was hailed as a great new product for the new millennium by CNN and ZD Net.

As Mike got more and more involved with the online community he realized that the computer was not a "want to have" but a "must have" for the disabled. The problem was how to help a person that was home bound and not looking for a job to buy a system that cost over $3000 and required hours and hours of training. Even though his product, the Radio Webcaster, was not a product for the disabled it was mostly purchased by disabled computer users that found it difficult to navigate complex web sites to find the audio treasures buried inside. After talking with many of these people he realized that unless someone came up with a way to provide computer access to the disabled for independent daily living they were going to get left behind in the new emerging digital world.

In early 2000, InHouse Radio Networks began work on a product to be known as the System Access Mobile Network. This product would allow a disabled person that had never before been able to use the net to send email, chat, hear news, audio books, magazines and thousands of radio stations, hundreds of radio reading services, shop online, play online games, take classes, look for jobs, bank and pay bills, even scan printed material all with a product costing under $1000. This product would access services similar to those provided by online service providers but the System Access Mobile Network service would be totally dedicated to the disabled market.

Mike believes that the reason the disabled don't have more products and services made for them is because there has never been a way to market products and services directly to the over 58 million Americans that require adaptive technology to access information online. The internet is all about special interests and communities of people that share a common pleasure or goal. Mike's dream is to create a community of disabled consumers that can work with product and service providers to educate them to the needs of the community and in return the community of course will buy these products and services.

Mike feels that when product and service providers see just how big this community really is that they will be inclined to provide products that will serve the needs of this community not because laws say so but because they want that market share. "After all, the internet is about bringing products and services to your door, and we need that as disabled consumers," Mike said, "The days of depending on advocate groups to get your point across are over. On the internet every individual has a voice and it should be the goal of each disabled person to have his or her voice heard not as only a member of the disabled community but as a person that, even though we do things a bit differently we also have meaningful and productive lives."