How They Did It

Home-Based
Business:
Entrepreneur

BACKGROUND:Callie knows Braille very well, in fact she started leaning it as a first-grader. Back before she got married and had kids, she'd briefly worked in the advertising business (and made a point of maintaining some of her connections from those days). When her youngest headed off to school, she decided it was time to get her career jump-started. She called on a few of her old advertising buddies for advice and started checking out what she would need to create a home-based business specializing in Braille production.

SOLUTION: With a carefully developed business plan, she approached the local credit union and they made her a $15,000 loan. With it, she purchased a $4,000 Braille printer, and a computer with screen reader and speech synthesizer. (The computer cost her about $2,000, with an additonal $600 for the screen reader and $200 for the speech synthesizer.) It took an additional $5,500 to purchase the refreshable Braille display and $500 more for the Braille translator sofware.

Callie turned the former basement rec room into her new office and spent most of her first few weeks in business calling on local Sacramento restaurants. From the start, response was very positive. Many restaurants asked her to use the existing fancy menu covers, into which she then inserted the translated text, printed on heavy paper.

Here's how she does it: first she scans the menu, with some proofreading help from 17-year-old son Andy. (Even the expensive scanners sometimes have trouble accurately scanning text--depending on the font, for example, "RN" may come out as "M.")

Then, with the document as a word processing file, she can spell-check it and run it through the Braille translator to create a Braille version. After another another round of proof, print, and final corrections, Callie can print the piece. As she got into doing corporate brochures, she found that often documents existed as electronic documents, cutting down on her proofing time. She also learned to use spreadsheet software to keep track of her billing and accounts receivable files.

And as she became more familiar with the computer, she realized it was time to advertise her services on the internet. Son Andy helped out again, helping her create a very simple template that she can easily modify to describe her products and current prices. Although he used a web site authoring tool to initally create the Braille by Hart site, his mom has found that the simplest way for her to update the site and make changes is by editing the HTML code in Notepad. Now, she's starting to offer web-site services, too--and Andy's younger brother is helping in the business after school.

With the growing demand for accessible web sites, Callie's finding the web side of her business growing by leaps and bounds. She's also beginning to develop a number of clients from distant locations, who have discovered her company through Braille by Hart's own internet advertising.