May 2007

Marc Mulcahy has always lived large. He had to. As a blind person, he had added challenges that required extra effort to accomplish his dreams. According to Mulcahy, taking personal responsibility is essential to overcome adversity. "If you face a disability, it´s your responsibility to be proactive and not waste your life," he said.

The culmination of Mulcahy´s work is LevelStar, a company formed in 2004 with his brother Matt Mulcahy, and his father, Mike Mulcahy, who also serves as advisor and moral support. LevelStar´s mission is to produce leading-edge assistive technology products. The first of LevelStar´s products is the Icon mobile manager, launched in November 2006.

As a college graduate, a high tech employee formerly of Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, and now chief product engineer for his own company, Mulcahy fully appreciates the advantages that are gained by the Icon.

"For me, the Icon is as elemental as pencil and paper. Just for starters, I can jot down notes quickly. I can even keep a day planner. And, I can do both with one small, portable device that talks to me. It goes where I go. That makes a big difference in my work and life," said Mulcahy.

As the Icon´s first user, Marc initially worked with the prototypes. One of the features that made a huge difference for him was the access to books. "It´s great. You can download them with a couple of quick steps, much easier than before, and then you can take your books with you on a pocket-sized device. Also, you can check email from anywhere and listen to music. Before, there were products that would do these things individually, but you´d have to have seven devices hanging around your neck to do them all. Now, I´ve got one small device that fits in the palm of my hand."

As a software engineer and primary developer for the Icon, one of Mulcahy´s challenges is to work with several hardware engineers to optimize software performance within the hardware requirements.

He also spends a lot of time thinking. "Thinking through what´s needed in a technological device that will make the biggest impact for sight-disabled people helped us make a paradigm shift in the way we built this product. During that process, an Icon would have been very helpful. Ideas come to you anytime. You can be on the bus, at home, on a walk. Now, I keep my Icon with me all the time. When a thought comes to me, I jot it down with the voice recorder," commented Mulcahy.

When asked how technology changed his life, Mulcahy said it provided a huge advantage. He noted that for the visually disabled, computers have had the same effect they did for sighted people, only perhaps more profound because of the quantum increase in access to information. "It has changed the way we communicate, the amount of information that is available, and the speed and convenience of getting information and communicating."

Mulcahy observed that a lot of people are not tech savvy, nor do they want to be. "My grandfather is eighty-eight years old and beginning to lose his vision. He lived his life without much exposure to computers and is not interested in learning computers now. My hope is with the quickness and ease of the BookShare features on the Icon, he can continue reading the paper everyday."

While Mulcahy is on his bus ride to work, or playing with his young daughter, he thinks about the future. "We have a real opportunity to build a great product, and let people discover the possibilities it brings on their own. One thing is for certain — with the Icon, blind people will be on a more equal footing than ever before. That is very exciting."

To hear more about how Marc uses his Icon tune into the audio cast "Morning with Marc and the Icon."