Mike May Biography Quotes 2 Report mistakes

Overview
Mike May is an American entrepreneur and adventurer best known for pioneering accessible GPS technology for people who are blind or have low vision, and for the extraordinary arc of losing sight in early childhood and later regaining partial vision as an adult. His life was chronicled by author Robert Kurson in the bestselling nonfiction book Crashing Through, which introduced a broad audience to the people around May and the scientific, athletic, and business worlds that shaped his path.

Early Life and Loss of Sight
May lost his vision in early childhood after a chemical accident, an event that dramatically altered his family's expectations and daily routines. Guided by a mother who insisted on independence, he learned to navigate the world with curiosity rather than fear. Orientation and mobility teachers, coaches, and family friends formed an early network of mentors around him, helping translate a philosophy of resilience into practical skills. Those adults emphasized travel skills, tactile literacy, and confidence, enabling him to participate in mainstream activities and to treat blindness not as an end point but as a different way of engaging with life.

Emerging Interests and Early Work
As a young adult, May's interests gravitated to the intersection of problem-solving and public good. He sought roles where technology could remove barriers, eventually directing his energy toward products and services that improved independent travel. He gained experience in business development and product strategy, learning how to bridge user needs and engineering realities. Colleagues from those years remember him as a connector: the person who could listen to users, sit with engineers, and translate between the two with equal respect.

Entrepreneurship and Accessible GPS
May came to prominence as the co-founder and leader of Sendero Group, a company that helped bring accessible GPS navigation to market for blind travelers at a time when mainstream systems were not designed with nonvisual access in mind. He assembled a team that blended software engineering, user research, and orientation-and-mobility expertise. Among the engineers who helped turn concepts into usable products was Charles LaPierre, whose technical work supported the practical navigation solutions Sendero became known for. May's approach put blind users at the center of design, incorporating feedback from mobility instructors, travelers, and advocacy organizations to ensure that features such as landmark identification, pedestrian routing, and speech output worked in the real world, not just in demos.

Under his leadership, Sendero forged collaborations with device manufacturers and community partners, iterating from early prototypes to tools that blind users could carry into unfamiliar neighborhoods, transit systems, and workplaces. Beyond shipping products, he evangelized for accessibility standards and insisted that inclusive design could scale commercially. Those efforts influenced not only users and peers but also product managers in the broader technology sector who were beginning to reckon with the importance of universal design.

Athletic Pursuits and Competitive Spirit
Parallel to his business career, May built a reputation as an exceptional athlete, particularly in alpine speed skiing. He set a world speed skiing record for a blind skier, a feat that distilled his appetite for calculated risk and rigorous preparation. The achievement was not solitary: guides, coaches, and friends from the skiing community stood beside him, coordinating communication and safety practices that allowed him to push the limits while managing danger. That discipline and teamwork echoed his ethos in business, where planning and trust are as critical as daring.

Partial Restoration of Sight
In midlife, May faced a momentous opportunity when an ophthalmology team proposed procedures that could restore limited vision. He elected to pursue a combination of corneal and stem-cell-based interventions, entering a complex course of surgeries and rehabilitation in the early 2000s. The medical specialists, rehabilitation therapists, and counselors around him prepared him for the paradoxes of regained sight: the brain's need to relearn visual interpretation, the disorientation of motion and depth, and the emotional impact of seeing faces and landscapes after decades of darkness. His spouse and family provided daily support through recovery, therapy appointments, and the slow, sometimes frustrating process of integrating new sensory information into habits built on touch and sound.

Robert Kurson's Crashing Through introduced these intimate dynamics to a wide readership, portraying the surgeons, scientists, family members, and friends who formed May's immediate circle during the surgeries and their aftermath. The book underscored a central theme of his life: that technology and human relationships move together, and that breakthroughs require both expertise and trust.

Advocacy, Community, and Leadership
After his surgeries, May embraced a public-facing role as speaker and advocate, describing not only the novelty of regained sight but also the continuing value of nonvisual skills. He emphasized that technology should extend, not replace, the competencies that blind people build. In forums with engineers, policymakers, and educators, he championed features like open map data, tactile alternatives, and reliable speech output, urging companies to involve users throughout design and testing. Within Sendero Group and beyond, he mentored younger colleagues, partnered with mobility instructors, and maintained close ties to customers whose feedback shaped successive releases.

At home, family remained a constant reference point. His spouse, children, and a close-knit circle of friends grounded his travel and speaking schedule, while his medical team continued periodic follow-ups. The same independence first cultivated by his mother guided decisions about risk, work, and sport, linking early lessons to later leadership.

Legacy and Impact
Mike May's biography sits at the junction of entrepreneurship, rehabilitation science, and adventure. By pushing accessible GPS from concept to daily utility, he expanded the travel horizons of countless blind and low-vision users and influenced how mainstream companies think about inclusive navigation. By returning to the slopes and setting a world record, he modeled how preparation and collaboration make extraordinary feats possible. By consenting to experimental surgeries and sharing the experience openly, he illuminated the cognitive and emotional realities of sight restoration for clinicians, researchers, and families alike.

The people around him are integral to that legacy: the mother who insisted on capability, the spouse and children who sustained him in private moments, the engineers like Charles LaPierre who transformed vision into product, the medical specialists whose skill carried him through surgery and rehabilitation, the coaches and guides who made speed skiing both thrilling and safe, and the writer Robert Kurson who preserved the story in the public imagination. Together, they highlight the communal nature of innovation and resilience, and they help explain why May's name remains synonymous with possibility in both the accessibility community and the wider world.

Our collection contains 2 quotes who is written by Mike, under the main topics: Technology - Fitness.