Why start this project?
Every “About page” is really an origin story. Why did you start this? I am Alan Dunbar, a US Army Veteran and founder of the Braille Dictionary Project. . One night I had the world’s worse headache and it didn’t want to go away. I couldn’t sleep, so I hopped into the car and started to go to the nearest VA hospital which was about 60+ miles away. It was very early in the morning, so no cars on the highway. I thought that something was wrong, but it didn’t seem bad, after all it was a headache. The exit was about 8 miles away and the hospital was 12 or so mile beyond that – The world suddenly “iris’ed out” like an old cartoon. I could see some light with my right eye, but couldn’t really focus on anything. It took several minutes to figure out my next step and I decided to use the phone’s GPS and have it tell me turn by turn where to go. It was a long very slow process but I did eventually find my way to the ER. They told me that I had a stroke. It surprised me because I didn’t know there were different kinds of stroke.
When I was released from the hospital, no one called or contacted me. When I eventually called the people were sympathetic, but they did not know about who could help – Becoming blind suddenly was not a “normal” thing they had dealt with. Eventually after a couple moths I found out about VIST Teams and BRC’s. I learned Braille at the BRC in West Palm Beach and started taking notes and figuring out the system so I could read again.
The Spark for the Project
I showed my notes to a few people in the BRC my second trip there and they really liked them. I made copies for some of the friends that I met there and for the Braille instructors. It was that spark that lead me to founding the Braille Dictionary Project. It is about Braille, but it is also putting all of the resources that I have gathered into one easy to read place. I am working to the point where everyone can have a copy so they can use it and thus not having someone else be in the position of not having resources when they need them so desperately.
Open Source
I decided to “copyright” the material in a way that is easy to share without legal entanglements. The open source community is mostly software developers, I lived in that world of computers, software development, networking and cyber security for a long time and still do. The open source license allows someone to add onto the existing and publish it, as long as they keep my name and don’t sell it. I want it to be available to as many people as I can.
The Braille Logo
The Braille Logo (⠃⠗⠇) – In second level Braille it is an abbreviation (BRL). Several people have asked about it, so I wanted to include that information.