Accessibility.net Inc Information

Accessibility.net was founded by Patrick J. Fischer in Martin City, Missouri in 1997 as F1-Key, LLC which held a Missouri Rehabilitation Services for the blind contract. The company was an authorized distributor VAR - Value Added Reseller for the leading manufacturers of technology which help persons who are blind and visually impaired from 1995 to 2014. Prior to that Patrick founded Share Technology in 1988 in Kansas City, Missouri which was a company that volunteered and also charged for his services as a technician. Patrick discovered in the early 90's that the technology for persons with disabilities was ahead of the curve as speech synthesis, text to speech, scan and read, voice recognition, to name a few, were not used in the mainstream. Persons with disabilities and the assistive technology they used, were early adopters to what we use on tablets and smartphones today. In 1993 with the help of the director (Dave Vogel) of RSB - Missouri Rehabilitation Service for the Blind, Patrick created the Laptop Reader for the Blind. The Laptop Reader for the Blind used a CompuAdd laptop running Microsoft DOS and Windows 3.11, along with an Artic transport hardware synthesizer and a copy of Artic Win Vision screen reader. Here are two pictures from 1993 of this first Laptop Reader for the Blind:Laptop Reader for the blind - front viewLaptop Reader for the blind - rear viewIn 1999 he moved its office to Omaha, Nebraska and working out of an apartment grew sales in the states of Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas while holding a Rehab Engineering contract in Missouri. In 2002 Patrick opened his first showroom featuring low vision products in Omaha at 108th and Maple, and in 2003 to a larger showroom at 120th and Center called the Low Vision Mart. In 2006 a bigger store was opened in Omaha at 111th and Fort Street which later had the name Nebraska Low Vision on the building. A second store was opened in Urbandale, Iowa in 2008 and eventually carried the name Iowa Low Vision. Today, Nebraska Low Vision is an on-line store for shopping and providing life-time support on all the products it sells.