by Amy-Lynn Fischer
Khaled Saad and Olivieri Giulieri, co-founders of HotBraille.com, sat down with freelance writer Amy-Lynn Fischer to talk about their unique web site and what it has to offer the visually impaired community.
HotBraille.com provides tools that facilitate communication among people with visual impairments, as well as their families and friends. HotBraille provides the only web-based Braille service that delivers tangible custom Braille transcription. In addition to its revolutionary Braille service, HotBraille.com also offers tools that enable users to connect with each other instantly.
The company was started by Olivieri Giulieri, a French software engineer who is currently working in the United States and who had worked for CCNV, a non-profit organization in France which created the first weekly Braille newsletter in the south of France, and Khaled Saad, a computer science student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. They’ve been friends since Olivieri moved to California eight years ago.
For the two founders, HotBraille came out of a desire to launch a unique web site that would make a difference in people’s lives. Unlike many other Internet entrepreneurs, their goal was not solely profit-driven.
Questions and Answers about HotBraille
Q: How does the Braille through the mail service work?
A: Visitors to HotBraille.com can type a letter, up to two Braille pages in length (that’s about 250 words), that HotBraille will print out on a Braille printer and send via U.S. mail to a visually impaired recipient. Visitors simply need to provide us with a street address, and the text of their letter.
Q: Who is a typical HotBraille user?
A: There is no typical user. We have 11,000 users from all over the world. Most of our users come from English-speaking countries, e.g., the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and we also have users from as far away as China, Lebanon, Germany, Vietnam and Nigeria (and 3 in the Vatican City State!). However, our most active users are blind and come to the site several times a day to communicate with other blind and sighted users.
Q: Why did you create HotBraille?
A: We wanted to create a useful web site to maximize the Internet’s potential for people who are visually impaired. We identified obstacles not only with Braille delivery, but with Internet accessibility, as well.
Interviews and surveys of visually impaired Internet and non-Internet users confirmed a profound need for HotBraille.
Q: How is HotBraille funded?
A: HotBraille.com is a privately held company founded in September 1999 and we support it with our time and money. HotBraille members may support the site with voluntary contributions for the use of our services. We also have plans to launch new value-added services that should help the service fund itself.
Q: What does HotBraille offer that other services for people with visual impairments do not?
A: Our users tell us the main reason for using HotBraille is simply convenience. It reduces obstacles for communicating freely with sighted friends and family. Braille printers are costly, and our services eliminate the need for sighted family and friends to purchase them, thereby opening up more avenues of communication. Some blind users have told us they own a Braille printer, but they use HotBraille to avoid the hassle of writing an address on an envelope.
Q: What other services does HotBraille provide?
A: Last year we added an on-line Braille tutorial where sighted people can come and learn Braille. We also added resources, like a searchable directory of schools for the blind, guide dog schools and Braille libraries in the US, all searchable by state.
Once we had enough users, it was time to allow them to interact and connect with each other. So we added a member search service that searches through personal profiles that users can create. Users can then send private messages to each other when they are on the site. We also host a public forum for discussion, which allows users to add and post ideas to ongoing discussions.
Many of our newly introduced services were inspired by actual feedback sent to us by our users. We’ve created an interactive web site for the blind community, and our users have as important a role in the site as we do.
Q: Do you think you’ve fulfilled your mission with HotBraille?
A: Yes, definitely, as is evident by the frequent feedback and voluntary contributions from our users. A recent example of this kind of positive feedback comes from Bobbie Evans, a blind member from Illinois: “I like HotBraille because it’s a place where I feel accepted and can meet other blind people who understand the trials, inconveniences and hardships of being blind, as well as the fact that blind people can and do live independent, fulfilling and productive happy lives. I can ask questions on blindness-related topics and get real answers. And I can share my own experiences and perhaps help other blind people to find success in their lives.”
We are proud of what we’ve created, and hope to introduce our site to many others who will benefit from HotBraille as much as Bobbie has.
Check out HotBraille for yourself. Just go to http://www.hotbraille.com. Look around and become acquainted with all the services. Write a letter and send it to a blind friend, or convert a favorite recipe into Braille and have it mailed to yourself! The service is free, and it’s one of the most innovative Internet projects to have come along in the new millennium.