George Kerscher

Secretary General

DAISY Consortium

You can’t build a life around hoping for something to come and cure you; you have to figure out ways to make things work.

About George

Has retinitis pigmentosa, which causes a very gradual degeneration of the retina.
His vision started declining at age 21 and he became totally blind at age 77.
Says “if you like puzzles, having a disability is great; you’re constantly trying to find new ways to make things work for you.”
Because he had so much time to cope with his slowly degenerating eyesight, he was able to think of and implement solutions for other blind people.
After he finished his undergraduate studies, he went back to school to pursue a master’s degree in computer science.
However, all of his materials were in print, and as his eyesight was starting to fail, he had trouble reading his books for class.
He wrote to the textbook companies and requested the floppy disks that contained the material in his textbooks.
From those disks, he wrote software that allowed his computer to read his books aloud to him, essentially developing the first audiobook.