Hi there! I’m Lisa. I originally 3D printed braille labels for a man I was dating who is blind.
In mid 2018, I organized all of the cans in his pantry while we were making a grocery list, and I was promptly introduced to 2 problems that so many visually impaired people face: handsy people and indistinguishable containers.
Since cans and jars are essentially identical to each other, by moving his items around, I essentially lost them for him.
After apologizing profusely, I quietly set out to find a braille food labeling solution to try and right my wrong. The options I found included: hand-brailling index cards and using rubber bands to hold them on to each item; buying expensive tech equipment; or using time-consuming apps every time you needed to distinguish one item from another. I knew these options were not practical for him. I didn’t want him to have a project on his hands because of my misstep.
Using my 3D printing experience, I decided to engineer, 3D print, and present him with a reusable braille label set of my own design as a surprise. He loved them so much, and immediately encouraged me to make these 3D printed reusable braille labels available to everyone who needs them –so that’s what I’m doing.
Feedback on candoable’s mission has been incredibly positive. Since starting candoable, I was fortunate enough to be nominated for a surprise pop-up champagne party from the CO+HOOTS Foundation. Soon after, I was the subject of a great little write up on the CO+HOOTS Foundation blog, and won 3rd place (and $1500 for candoable) in Pitch Gangplank 2018, held at the Chandler Gangplank.
Astonishingly, in February 2019, I was featured as a startup on NPR’s How I Built This podcast in their How You Built That segment. (I still can’t believe it, as I love this podcast.) Listen to the full episode with JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman below or on your favorite podcast app –and if you want to hear just my portion skip to the last 5 minutes.
NPR then did a follow up on candoable in February 2020, which can be found at the end of the Panera Bread/Au Bon Pain repeat episode with Ron Shaich (below).
Most recently, I was named a 2020 Louis Braille Touch of Genius Award for Innovation winner. This is an internationally recognized award for innovation in tactile literacy. I am so grateful for the opportunity to advance candoable’s efforts, and inspire more people to create solutions to problems they encounter, with this title and prize.
All CanDo braille labels are manufactured at Gangplank Queen Creek, a collaborative workspace in the heart of downtown Queen Creek, Arizona. To learn more about our community, and the incredible people that make candoable possible, check out Gangplank Queen Creek’s website here.
For more information, or to request custom 3D printed CanDo braille labels for your home, school, workplace, program, or convention, please contact me (Lisa Dalton) at hello@candoable.co.