About
Built by people who believe access is a right
BrailleBuddy by Lonia AI, founded by Mary Leriche.
Our mission
Build high-trust software that expands access — securely, compliantly, and by design. Built on trust. Designed for everyone.
Accessibility
Every product meets WCAG 2.2 AA. We design for the people most likely to be excluded, then verify that it works for everyone else.
Compliance
FERPA, SOC 2 alignment, Section 508. Compliance is built into the architecture, not bolted on as an afterthought.
Security
Encryption at rest and in transit. Row-level data isolation. Audit logs on every action. OAuth SSO — no passwords stored.
Why BrailleBuddy exists
8.7 million Americans live with vision difficulty. In K-12 schools, blind and low-vision students depend on braille materials to learn alongside their peers. But manual transcription costs $50–100+ per hour and takes 1–3 weeks.
A blind student should not receive Monday's assignment on Thursday.
BrailleBuddy is building what the ed-tech industry says is not worth building — accessible education technology for a population that most companies overlook. We believe the market is wrong. Every student deserves materials on time, in the format they need.
Who built BrailleBuddy
Mary Leriche is the solo founder of Lonia AI. Based in New Jersey, she has spent more than a decade leading accessibility-first government UX, including 130+ state and municipal redesigns measured against WCAG and Section 508. Her training combines a Rutgers Master of Business and Science in UX/Computer Science with a business core, which is why Lonia AI products are shipped accessible, compliant, and secure by default rather than retrofitted later.
Lonia AI exists to build software that works for the people the industry routinely overlooks. Lift as I climb is a practice, not a slogan: every product we ship has to clear that bar before it ships at all.
Why bidirectional matters
A teacher of the visually impaired typically supports students across multiple schools and grade levels, often as the only braille-fluent adult in the building. The general education teacher in the room rarely reads braille at all. That asymmetry is the daily reality of inclusive education.
When a blind student turns in homework written on a braille notetaker, the classroom teacher cannot read what the student produced. When the teacher hands out a worksheet, the student cannot read what was assigned until someone finds time to transcribe it. Both directions break, and both gaps cost instructional time.
BrailleBuddy fixes both directions. Print to braille for the student, braille to print for the teacher, in minutes, on the same page when needed. The teacher does not need to learn braille to participate fully in the student's education, and the student does not need to wait days to receive Monday's assignment.
The Lonia AI portfolio
BrailleBuddy is part of a family of products built on the same three pillars: accessibility, compliance, and security. Each product serves a different audience but shares the same commitment to expanding access.
Visit lonia.ai to see the full portfolio.
What's next
BrailleBuddy is one expression of a broader Lonia AI platform for accessible, compliant, secure document workflows. The enterprise vertical of that platform — for organizations outside K-12 that need the same trust posture for contracts, records, and regulated documents — ships as Theia by Lonia AI. Same architecture, same standards, different audience.