Market Research

Fewer than 1% of the two million visually impaired (not necessarily completely blind) people in the UK are regular users of Braille. This includes both the braille newbies (who might only know uncontracted braille), and also the very experienced users (who might learn from Braille music and play to professional level). This means 99% of the visually impaired don't know Braille at all. They are not able to read even the most simple but crucial information such as button numbers in lifts or drug labels. So, roughly, there's a potentially 10x to 100x larger market for teaching new braille users than there is for serving only the existing ones. We believe that some organizations have been focusing too much on creating Braille content but not enough on making sure people can read it! Teaching visually-impaired people even the basics of Braille would already be a step in the right direction. Problems in Braille Education and How We're Solving Them: Expensive teaching materials: we solve it by having the teaching materials on one relatively cheap device. Shortage of special educators: we help the special educators leverage their expertise by creating scalable learning experiences (for example, interactive voice guided courses). There currently are no competitors taking this exact approach. We also conducted user-testing and user-interviews at the Royal National Institute of Blind People. The information gathered there was extremely valuable and corroborated our initial hypotheses about the market. The visually-impared participants said that learning braille was a tough task for them when they were young. They also mentioned that now that they know braille, the price of braille books and e-readers is a big obstacle. All of the participants who had learned braille, said it was a crucial part of their daily lives: finding medicine, discerning objects by the braille tags on them or reading books.

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