What if a driving game did not need a screen? For Marty Schultz, that question became the beginning of a much larger story—one shaped by blind players, teachers, students, and the possibilities that emerge when a developer listens.
On the Even Though I’m Blind Experience, Schultz joins host Cazerny Bussey to trace his journey from an after-school app club to Blindfold Games and ObjectiveEd. The conversation moves from audio racing and accessible card games to braille literacy, artificial intelligence, and helping struggling readers build confidence. Across those different projects, one idea keeps returning: useful technology begins with understanding what people need.
Watch the full interview: Marty Schultz: From Blindfold Games to Accessible Learning on YouTube.
An after-school project becomes Blindfold Games
Schultz’s story starts with his daughter’s birthday wish lists. A programmer by training, he saw an opportunity to turn a familiar family routine into an app—and an opportunity for students to learn how software gets made. He worked with children at her middle school to design a wish-list application, handling the programming as they contributed ideas.
When the students wanted to make a game next, he challenged them to think beyond copies of games that already existed. Their eventual direction was a driving game built around sound. Players would listen through headphones, steer using the phone or tablet, collect noisy prizes, and avoid audible obstacles. The game became Blindfold Racer.
The most important development work came through feedback. Schultz recalls testing with blind children at Lighthouse organizations in South Florida, then learning from blind adults who explained what they wanted from accessible games. Requests for solitaire, cryptograms, Sudoku, and other experiences helped turn one project into an expanding collection.
In the interview, he describes working with blind and low-vision testers around the world. Their suggestions shaped both the games themselves and how people controlled them. Accessibility was part of the play experience, including how to make gestures intuitive and avoid interactions that slowed the game down.
Schultz says the collection grew to roughly 80 games and passed half a million downloads. ObjectiveEd’s published history also documents that growth. For ETIB’s audience, the story offers a practical example of how a community’s participation can guide a product from an interesting idea into something people choose to use.
When teachers saw another possibility
Teachers began finding educational uses for those games. Schultz describes requests from teachers of students with visual impairments and orientation and mobility specialists who saw opportunities to practice fine motor skills, gestures, memory, and spatial concepts.
A Battleship-style game, for example, could help a student think through coordinates on a grid. Other games could reinforce the gestures used to navigate an iPhone or iPad. The appeal of playing and the value of practicing a skill could exist in the same experience.
That shift helped shape ObjectiveEd. Schultz, its president and co-founder, explains that he and his colleagues wanted to focus more directly on students’ learning. Games could provide additional practice between lessons, while a web dashboard could show teachers where students were progressing and where they needed support.
The company’s current BLV Steps offerings bring that approach into tools for blind and low-vision learners, covering areas such as VoiceOver gestures, orientation and mobility, listening, and transition readiness.
Braille, speech recognition, and the path to BuddyBooks
One of Schultz’s most memorable examples begins with a simple experiment: placing material over an iPad to find out whether it could still detect a touch. That exploration helped lead to games that paired embossed braille sheets with the tablet. A child could read the braille, respond to a prompt, and receive feedback through a game.
The next question was how speech recognition might support braille practice. In the interview, Schultz describes a system that sends text to a refreshable braille display, listens as a student reads aloud, and compares the spoken response with the text. That work became Braille AI Tutor, supported through Microsoft’s AI for Accessibility program.
Teachers then encouraged the team to apply a related approach to students who struggled with print reading. The result was BuddyBooks: a student and a computer take turns reading aloud, one sentence at a time. The shared reading helps the story move forward while giving the student regular opportunities to practice.
Schultz explains that BuddyBooks also gives teachers or parents information about reading fluency, accuracy, and difficult passages. He discusses vocabulary preparation and conversations about the story as additional ways to support understanding. He also describes a Bookshare partnership that helps connect eligible readers with books they want to read.
Helping students—and making room for teachers
For Schultz, the purpose of AI in education is closely tied to the time and attention a teacher can give an individual student. In the episode, he describes a classroom where students practice reading while the teacher follows their activity through a dashboard and works directly with those who need help.
He also speaks about confidence. A student who has come to expect difficulty may find a more manageable rhythm in reading one sentence, hearing the next, and staying engaged with a story. Schultz shares examples of progress reported through school work and family feedback. Those accounts are part of his experience with the program; they are not a promise that every student will have the same result.
The work is continuing to develop. A National Eye Institute Phase I research project describes plans to adapt BuddyBooks for braille readers through refreshable braille displays, speech recognition, and teacher-facing progress information. This is development and research work, rather than a claim that every planned feature is already available.
A wider career, with a consistent focus on solving problems
Schultz brings a long software-business background to this work. His official biography describes earlier ventures including eSped and Omtool, alongside his mentoring and speaking work. In his conversation with Cazerny, he frames ObjectiveEd as a way to use that experience to give back.
Beyond the projects discussed in depth in the interview, ObjectiveEd’s current portfolio also includes LifeLaunch Virtual Adventures, which provides simulated situations for practicing decisions involving work, finances, and independent living. The company’s Innovation Lab documents additional research, including Kids Like Me Bookshelf, a project supporting disability-related role-model stories.
His advice to emerging developers is direct: find a real problem, understand the people experiencing it, and use technology to help solve it. He also encourages people to try, learn, and allow room for failure.
That perspective connects the whole conversation. A game can offer enjoyment. A practice tool can help a student approach a task with more confidence. Information about that practice can help a teacher decide what to do next. Schultz’s story shows how listening to one group of users can open the door to work with a much broader reach.
Watch the conversation and explore Marty’s work
- Marty Schultz’s official website
- ObjectiveEd’s current products and resources
- BuddyBooks reading support for families
- BLV Steps for blind and low-vision learners
- ObjectiveEd Innovation Lab: research and projects
This feature draws on Marty Schultz’s November 4, 2026 interview with Cazerny Bussey, supplemented by his official website, ObjectiveEd’s product and research pages, and the linked federal research record. Product availability and research status were checked on November 12, 2026.