Michael Hingson talks about his employment journey and how everything he has done in his past has led him to Aira. And that is what Michael brings to his new Strategic Sales position at Aira. He is not new to Aira as he has been involved for over 2 and a half years and understands completely how Aira brings instant access to information.

Michael is well known for his Best Selling book titled, Thunder Dog. Telling the story about his experience surrounding the escape from Tower 1 during the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Join Michael Hingson at the National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando Florida and hear about what led him to the 74th floor of Tower 1 and his journey to Aira.

You can read more about Michael Hingson on his web site and join his newsletter as well as find links for his books and news releases.

You can find out more about Aira on the web and follow Aira on Twitter @Airaio

See Complete transcription below.

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Transcription:

Michael Hingson – Bringing the Thunder to Aira

[Music]

Michael:

Everyone just turned and ran as we heard this rumble that became this deafening roar in like about a half a second, which was tower to collapsing, about a hundred yards away from our position.

Oh my God Mike, there’s no World Trade Center anymore, and again I asked him what he saw, and he said “All I see are fingers of fire, and flame hundreds of feet tall, and pillars of smoke, the towers are gone.

The airplane hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, we had no clue what had happened.

When people talk about diversity, you very rarely ever hear disabilities mentioned, so I have a speech that’s entitled “Moving from Diversity to Inclusion.”

But people are gonna say “Oh now blind people can see, or now blind people can do this, blind people come do that.”

And yeah, there are gonna be a lot of things that blind people can do that we couldn’t do before, and it isn’t that we couldn’t do them, is that we didn’t have the information to do them.

What AIRA will give us, is a means to get that information.

AIRA, instant access to information presents Michael Hingson, his journey to AIRA, bringing the Thunder to AIRA.

A Blind Abilities production.

Michael:

With AIRA I can just go into the store with a trained AIRA agent who describes, I’m able to quickly go find the things that I want, it’s so much more efficient.

And I use the word see very comfortably because the dictionary defines in part, to see is to perceive, it doesn’t necessarily have to be with your eyes.

[Music]

Michael:

‘m Michael Hingson, H I N G S O N.

So I want to kind of start by going backwards a little bit, actually I want to start by by just talking about now and then, then jump back.

I was recently hired by AIRA after being involved with the company for about two and a quarter years.

I am now the director of strategic sales and my job is really an exciting one because I get to go find corporations and others that we can establish relationships with to try to get them to buy into AIRA, both for employees, but also for users.

So take a grocery store chain, typically today a blind person goes into a store and I do this a...