In 2021, a Brooklyn-born recording artist named Cazerny Bussey released an album called Cfly 728. One of the tracks on it is called “Even Though I’m Blind.”
Four years later, that song title is the name of an organization, one that runs an internet radio station, an interview podcast, a curated directory of blind-owned businesses, a blog, an events calendar, and a project that collects encouragement from the community in fifteen-second voice recordings.
I want to be precise about what that sequence tells you, because it is the whole reason I’m writing this. Even Though I’m Blind, Inc. did not begin as a strategy deck or a grant application. It began as a song somebody wrote about his own life, and then it kept growing until it needed a name of its own.
I am incredibly happy to announce that Cazerny Bussey and Even Though I’m Blind, Inc., ETIB, are now the newest Sponsors of Access Information News, joining us on August 10, 2026. If you enjoy reading Access Information News for free each and every week, it is Sponsors like Cazerny Bussey and Even Though I’m Blind, Inc., ETIB, that make it possible. Sincerest thanks to Cazerny and his team for giving back and making free access information news possible for more than 45,000 readers, all over the world, each week.
How This Came to My Desk
Late in July 2026, Dr. Kirk Adams reached out to me. Readers of this publication will know Dr. Adams, a member of the Top Tech Tidbits editorial team, a co-founder of the PWD Media Distribution Co-op, the former President and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, Founder of Innovative Impact, current Executive Director of the ISDI, and most recently, author of the new book, “The Disability Dividend.”
Dr. Adams had been contacted by a young blind man with, in his words, “a very compelling story.” He was preparing to interview him for his podcast. He thought I should meet him.
I read what Dr. Adams sent, spent some time with what ETIB had actually built, and wrote back the same afternoon. My answer was that Access Information News was the right home for them, not Top Tech Tidbits.
That distinction matters, and it’s worth explaining.
Top Tech Tidbits covers access technology: the products, the updates, the how-to’s, the things you install and use. Access Information News covers access information, the broader category of what actually shapes a blind person’s life. Policy. Advocacy. Community. Opinion. In other words, the parts of the experience that no screen reader ships with.
ETIB does not make a product. It makes a public square. And that is an Access Information News story.
Cazerny accepted the following morning. His first note back thanked Kirk before it thanked me, which told me something I have since found to be consistent about how he operates.
The Man Before the Microphone
Bussey’s creative record predates ETIB by more than a decade, and it is a matter of public catalog rather than biography.
Mind on Heaven came out in 2012, a gospel-leaning record with features from Brother Barr, Promise Eternity, and Beasia Bussey. Cazerny Google It, twelve tracks, followed on July 21, 2016. Then Cfly 728 in 2021, the one with “Even Though I’m Blind” on it. He records under his own name and under the alias C.FLY, which he says stands for “Cazerny Forever Loves You.” His music sits on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pandora, where anyone can go and hear it.
Translation: The man was building an audience for his own voice for ten years before he built a platform for anyone else’s. The organization is not a pivot into advocacy. It is the same instinct, pointed outward.
He says he lost his eyesight at fifteen, following surgery on his retina. He does not treat that as the headline of his own story. In a July 2026 interview he put it this way:
“I lost my eyesight at 15, but blindness does not define the full scope of who I am. It is one part of my perspective.”
He is also a father of five, and he is unusually direct about how that connects to the work: “My children are not separate from my purpose. They are a major reason behind it.”
Why He Built It
For me, this is the part that made the decision.
Asked why he started the organization, Bussey said he did it because he understood firsthand how easily blind and visually impaired people can be “overlooked, underestimated, or spoken for instead of being given the opportunity to speak for themselves.”
And then this:
“I wanted to create something led by lived experience, an organization that would help people feel visible, connected, informed, and empowered without using pity as the message.”
Without using pity as the message.
Translation: That’s not a slogan. That’s an editorial policy, and it is a hard one to hold. Pity is the easiest fundraising instrument in the disability sector and the most corrosive one. It converts quickly and it costs the community something every time it is used. A person who states plainly, in public, that he will not build on it has told you what kind of operator he intends to be, and has given you something concrete to hold him to later.
I have been publishing in this space long enough to have read a great many mission statements. That one is better than most, because it names a thing it refuses to do.
What ETIB Actually Runs
ETIB’s own stated mission is “to uplift blind and visually impaired people by creating platforms and experiences that inform, inspire, connect, and open doors.” Here is what that looks like in practice.
The Community Connect Directory is the newest piece, and the one I will be watching most closely. It is a listing of businesses and services that are blind-owned, visually-impaired-owned, or that specifically serve blind and low vision people. What I like about it is the discipline behind it: listings are reviewed and maintained by ETIB staff rather than self-submitted, and the eligibility standards are published openly rather than left vague. Those are the rules you set when you intend a directory to be trusted rather than merely large. It is early days, and a directory is only ever as good as what fills it, but the foundation here is the right one.
The ETIB Experience is the interview podcast, and its guest list is the argument for it. Krystle Allen of Eyes Like Mine. Deborah Fitzgerald, Miss Altruistic 2024. Krystle Boateng, Director’s Choice 2024. Christopher Felder, known as The Blind Steppa. Angela Harris of the IMperfeKtlymade Fashion Show and Foundation. Ariana Dewberry, who has since gone from guest to co-hosting on ETIB Radio. Esli Ramos.
Look at that roster again. These are not conference keynoters or vendor executives. They are pageant winners, dancers, designers, and organizers, people with real standing inside their own communities who rarely get a long-form microphone. Booking them is a deliberate editorial choice, and it is the choice I would have made.
ETIB Radio streams music and talk, and openly invites independent blind and visually impaired artists to submit for airplay. It has been running since at least September 2022, which makes it the oldest piece of the operation.
Seen Through Sound invites community members to record fifteen- to sixty-second messages of encouragement, which are reviewed and published. It is the smallest thing they do and one of the more quietly humane ideas I have come across this year.
There is also a blog and an events calendar.
Translation: One person is running a radio station, a podcast, a vetted business directory, a community audio project, a blog, and an events calendar at the same time. Whatever else is true about the size of the audience today, that is not a small undertaking, and it is not the profile of someone dabbling.
Why I Wanted Them in Access Information News
I apply the same three questions to every sponsor I try to bring in.
Do they serve our readers directly? Yes, the Community Connect Directory is the kind of resource this publication exists to surface.
Do they amplify voices that do not otherwise get amplified? Yes, and demonstrably. The guest roster is the evidence, and it is not a roster you could assemble from a press-release inbox.
Are they led by lived experience, or delivered to it? This is the one I care most about. Blind founder. Blind guests. Blind audience. Bussey’s own framing, “led by lived experience,” is the correct distinction and he arrived at it himself.
There is a difference between an organization that serves the blind community and an organization that is the blind community talking to itself. ETIB is the second kind. Those are rarer, they are harder to build, and they are worth more to a publication like AIN than a polished campaign ever will be.
I will add the obvious caveat, because I would rather say it than have you notice I did not: ETIB is early. It is not a large institution and I am not going to dress it up as one. What it is instead is a genuine, working, blind-led media operation in its opening chapter, and this publication has always been more interested in that than in scale for its own sake.
A Note of Thanks
Cazerny, thank you for providing your support to a community that so sorely needs it, and for the clarity you brought to your first note. Dr. Adams, thank you for the introduction, you certainly have a gift for this, and you were right again.
For readers unfamiliar with how this publication is funded: Access Information News is operated as a not-for-profit project by Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd.. All funds generated by the publication are held in escrow and used only to fund its ongoing distribution. When the sponsor roster is not full, my company, Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd., covers the difference. Sponsorship rates are deliberately set below industry standards for PPV and PPC. Sponsorship also inlcudes membership in the PWD Media Distribution Co-op, which carries Sponsor content across a shared network of social media channels comprised of more than 26 unique leaders across the disability community.
Where to Learn More
- Website: https://eventhoughimblind.com
- The ETIB Experience podcast: https://eventhoughimblind.com/even-though-im-blind-experience/, with links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube
- ETIB Radio: https://eventhoughimblind.com/even-though-im-blind-radio/
- Community Connect Directory: https://eventhoughimblind.com/etib-community-connect-directory/
- ETIB Blog: https://eventhoughimblind.com/etib-blog/
- ETIB Events Calendar: https://eventhoughimblind.com/even-though-im-blind-events-calendar/
- Email: etib@eventhoughimblind.com 📧️
- Phone: +1 (910) 853-5247 📱️
” The greatest barrier to accessibility is indifference. “
Aaron Di Blasi, PMP
Engineer, Educator, Advocate, Publisher & Journalist
President & Sr. PMP, Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd., PR Director: AT-Newswire, Publisher: AI-Weekly, Top Tech Tidbits, Access Information News, Title II Today
Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd.
President, Sr. Project Management Professional (2006 — Present)
Innovative ideas. Solutions that perform.
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