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This is Science Friday. I'm Flor Lichten.

Today in the podcast, a conversation with blind inventor Josh Mealy about his fight to make the world more accessible.

I would rather do it and get in trouble for it than live in a world where we just accept

a lack of equal access to information for blind people.

When inventor and scientist Josh Mealy was four years old, a neighbor poured sulfuric acid on his head, which burned and permanently blinded him.

In his new book called Connecting Dots, a Blind Life, Josh chronicles what happened afterwards, growing up as a blind kid and how he built his career as an inventor and designer of adaptive technology.

Now Dr. Joshua Mealy is an Amazon design scholar and MacArthur Fellow, aka a genius grant recipient.

Josh, welcome back to Science Friday.

It's so wonderful to be here. Thanks, Flora.

This is a personal book. You tell your story, you know, your family's in it.

Why did you want to write it? That's a great question. My work is all about technology and accessibility

and raising awareness of blindness and disability inclusion. And I think I just realized that writing a book would be a really

powerful way of connecting with people who, number one, may not have any exposure to accessibility

or disability. And number two, of course, I really want to be part of encouraging people

who have disabilities to think more deeply about the technology

that they use, the rights that we have, the way that we interact in the world and the opportunities

that we all have and that technology either allows us to have or gets in the way of having.

Let's talk about your family.

You write that your mom and your family never left you out of anything because you couldn't see.

You all went to the movies and your mom or your sister narrated.

Your mom brought you to museums.

...