At Seeing Hands, we want to provide Braille literacy at all of its stages. We’ve often focused on the early Braille reader, but wherever we find a gap, we will try to fix it. We found a gap. Specifically, Braille display users have no good dictionaries that can be read directly on our displays. There are dictionaries that have been translated to Braille files, but finding a word to get its definition is a painful process, and the files can be too big to open on some displays. Languages other than English may not even have this.

This is where we thought we could make a difference. In partnership with several interested Braille display users, we have started a pilot project to design formats for dictionaries which work well on Braille displays. For the past month, we have designed formats that allow for convenient usage and the tools to build this format from any available dictionary. We’re almost ready to release these to the general public.

What to expect

We expect to have our first public release in July of 2024. Our first release will make a couple dictionaries and a thesaurus available in English. These will include versions that are compatible and convenient to use on a Braille display as well as versions that can be used on other equipment such as Daisy players.

This is not the end for us. After our first release, we’re only planning to expand. Other languages, other device types, all of these are on our list. We’ll be taking suggestions throughout the process and we’ll have a support contact for any questions.

Want to get involved?

While the public versions aren’t quite finished yet, there is a private beta list that has been helping us design and test the best versions and it’s open to members. There are two ways to get involved before our release becomes available:
Fill out our dictionary interest survey to tell us what you want to see and get notified when our public release is out at s.seeinghands.org/dictionary
Join our testing and discussion group at groups.io/g/brailledictionary
Or you can just watch this space and see where our work leads.