An Interview with Mike May: Helping Others Find Their Way with Wayfinding Technology

“The better you get around, the better you engage in life.” A pioneer in the accessible technology space and a record holder in downhill skiing, Mike May’s life proves that the possibilities are limitless. 

Mike says his mother gave him the freedom to explore after he became blind at the age of three, learning skills and “work arounds” on his own. “So much of life, whether it’s crossing the street or figuring out how to deal with a PDF, is about work arounds,” says Mike.  

Entering the accessibility arena in the 1990s, Mike saw the commercial success of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and its potential to help people who were blind or low vision. Asking himself what he could do to make life better from an accessibility standpoint, “It all came back to getting around,” he says. “With accessible navigation, you can be the leader.” He founded The Sendero Group in 1999, and in 2000, the first accessible GPS was born. 

Differing from the already commercially available GPS because it worked on certain braille devices, accessible GPSs like the BrailleNote provided more verbose instructions and environmental descriptions, offering a greater number of customizable options. “We had to learn how to make both the braille output and the speech output better,” says Mike. “There are many things that impact how you present information and not everyone is the same. Over time, we created options so users could customize the output.” 

Such a project did not come without challenges, however, and Mike and The Sendero Group had difficulty getting some members of the blind community to adopt the accessible GPS. Many of them found it to be too cumbersome or costly, and Sendero was unable to secure the government funding needed to offset the cost. Mike says he saw a turning point occur when other companies, including Freedom Scientific and HumanWare, saw the market potential of accessible GPS and began similar projects. 

After releasing 22 versions of the accessible GPS, The Sendero Group closed in 2018. Mike has not stepped away from the world of accessible tech, however, and has consulted with companies like Uber about the accessibility of their apps. Currently a Navigation Technology Advisor at APH, Mike was inducted into the Consumer Technology Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside leaders from both Apple and Samsung and received a Bolotin award from the National Federation of the Blind in 2010. 

As one might expect, Mike is very passionate about the wayfinding technology that will be integrated into The Dot Experience. This technology will allow everyone to move through the museum independently at their own pace, something that is nearly impossible in many museums where people with disabilities must rely on a guide, a friend, or a family member to describe and guide them through exhibits.  

Mike believes that APH has the expertise necessary to make the vision of The Dot Experience a reality. “APH has applied accessibility in so many different arenas already that taking it to the next step in the form of a museum is not too large of a leap,” he says. “This is going to be a state-of-the-art experience that will be an example to others. People will be able to come to the museum and see for themselves how it’s done and take that home.”