Hello fellow djs, creators, and music fans everywhere!
my name is Michael Bernard, but my friends and others call me Mike. You can too. Just lastweek I learned of Blind Productions while reading through an issue of Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday. After viewing everything on the site I thought man! I’ve been looking for a place like this for years. Although I don’t record them often, I’ve always wished that there was an accessible place somewhere online where I could share my educational audio tutorials. The only problem was that for the longest time, there wasn’t such a place available for the blind. But now with Blind Productions, that’s all changed for the better. Its also nice to be on a platform that doesn’t constantly bug you about uploading and providing a photo of yourself. Just created an account today and wanted to take some time to introduce myself and to share a bit about my self.
As stated above as I said, my name is Mike. I’m 54 years old, been legally blind since shortly after birth. I’ve got three sisters although we do have an age gap between us, with my little sister at 44, second oldest sister who is going to be 46 come this July, and my oldest sister bringing it home at age 68. See? I told you there was an age gap. Among all four of us, I’m the only blindy in the group. On February 18, 1972, at approximately 12:30PM during a snowstorm yet, I was born premature at only one pound eleven ounces. As a result, the hospital had to put me in an incubator, which did some damage to my eyes causing me to become legally blind. I do have some usable vision although I do wear glasses to avoid putting extra strain on my eyes and yes, I do use a folding cane. Most people in that situation often don’t make it, but like my Dad says, I was a fighter. I was supposed to be part of triplets. I would have had one brother and one sister. Unfortunately, due to some complications my Mom had giving birth to them at the time, my siblings weren’t as strong as their big brother. Nevertheless I ended up with sisters anyway from a previous relationship. I graduated from high school in the Summer of 1991 and graduated with an administrative Assistand/office Assistant degree in 2024 and for the past two years I’ve been serving as a helpdesk operator from home for an online computer school, Computer Core. The position started out as an internship, as I had to complete one as part of my program. I went online, did a google search and after a few fumbles, I found them and sent an email. Within a matter of minutes an email from The Executive Director appeared in my outlook. She said that she was quite impressed with my writing skills and was very interested in learning more about me. We arranged an interview right away and scheduled it for the next day and had a nice long conversation, over the phone that is. I don’t know of too many people who have phone interviews on a Saturday afternoon, but we did it. By the end of the conversation Donna knew right away that I’d make a good fit with the team and I received my very first assignment that same night. At first I started working as a voiceover artist of sorts I guess you could call it. She gave me the personal story of one of the students and it was my task to turn the written word into audio to which could then become part of a video. Using my word processing skills and production skills, I was able to put together something grate. The audio production contained an AI voice reading the student’s personal story with sound effects and music playing in the background. If you heard it, you’d think it was something from sixty minutes. In fact, the story I was working on just happened to be the personal story of our Program Manager. Nuria told me that after she had let a friend of hers hear the audio story I created about her, her friend was practically in tears. It touched her that much. In addition to working as a remote helpdesk operator, I’m also a dj on the internet. At the moment I’m trying to get hooked up with xradio.zone. The station has nothing to do with the blind, but it is a place where anyone who has the tallant and willingness can come aboard and spin the tunes for a worldwide audience. The station receives 1,000,000 listeners per year and gets 500 listeners per day. The only struggle I’m having right now is trying to log into their Discord. Captchas are the sworn enimy of screen reader users, so the station manager and a dj friend of mine as well as the support team at Discord’s Tech Support are trying to help too. I certainly hope they’ll be able to get me up and running soon. So how did I get into radio in the first place you ask, well that’s a pretty interesting story. Wow how do you like that? already I’m telling stories and I’m not even a grandpa 😀, but I am an uncle, three neices and one nephiew.
As for the radio, my genre consists of disco of the 70s all the way up to today's hits. Although I can crank out the tunes like a pro, it may surprise you to know thatI can do it although I am legally blind. I cannot see my computer screen, but I can still pull off a slammin show.In Augast of 1987 while getting ready to enter my second year of junior high (aka 8th grade),, I started out with just a normal stereo system containing of dual cassette, turn table, A-Track player and A.M/F.M radio. When Mom and Dad were away at work, I'd borrow a chair from the dining room, bring it into my bedroom, sit down, grab the mike and go to town! Back then all I could do was dub either vynal and/or cassettes to cassette and talk over the intro of the songs. Naturally it didn't sound all that good as it wasn't exactly professional equipment. However, I'd produce fake shows on tape and share them with family and friends. I remember sharing one recording with a teacher, she was at home one night listening to it, when her husband walked in and said, "Hey Janet what's that radio station you're listening to?" Boy! you should've seen the look on Roger's face when she told him that it wasn't a real radio station, but in fact, was a recording of a fake radio show recorded by one of her own students! Even my cousin Kim was impressed. During her weekend passes from the armed forces in Kentucki, she'd visit and sometimes even join me in my dj play. Soon after, everyone at school caught onto my pretend dj gigs and encouraged me to do it for real which I eventually did.
After high school graduation, I enrolled in college and during my spair time when not hitting the books or in class, I volunteered at the campus radio station. I was known to the team as the guy spinning the awesome 80s hits. In addition I also took on a volunteer position at the local radio reading station for the blind in my local area, serving as a sound engineer. They called it board operator but I think sound engineer has a better kick. Working at the campus radio station was a real blast. As time went on, people started asking me to play 90s tunes and other stuff to which wasn't part of my original set, and so in the fall of 2001 I decided to try something a bit different by starting to add music from the 90s to the 2000s and everyone had a ball! By 2015, after taking a brief break from radio to focus on school, I brought my radio gig onto the internet. My first internet broadcast was with ACB Radio Interactive: A radio station run by the American Council for the Blind and spent five years there before they decided to give me the boot. It's a long story. Trust me, you don't want to know. Fortunately I had a safety net, Sonic Radio. I had found Sonic while surfing an internet radio forum. This is where I met Dave, a very nice man from Australia who owned it. At first he was a bit hesitant to take me on as a dj, as he wasn't sure how listeners would react to a blind dj burning up the airwaves and simulcasting with two stations at once. But he decided to take the plunge and allowed me to do a test show. So on May 17, 2017, I did my very first show with Sonic Radio and the next day, I received an email from Dave informing me, that everyone in the chat room was thumbs up. He said they all loved the show and officially accepted me onto the station. Within a week, I met Paul, one of the other djs at Sonic Radio. He was so impressed with my broadcast, that he asked me to produce a promo for his show. Yes, I can also do production work. During the late Summer of 2025, things started heading south at sonic radio and so myself and many of my fellow djs left. Now we're all teamed up at xradio.zone.
As stated above, in addition to DJaying, I also work from home for a call center for a computer school. Oh wait, I already told you that 😀. I’ll be shareing archives of my past and hopefully future shows here on Blind Productions soon, so stay tuned.
If you’d like to find out more about me, or have any questions, feel free to email me at
mbern6516@aol.com. Thanks for taking the time to listen to my rambling.
Mike B, DJ and helpdesk operator
Rochester, NY