In 1995 Randolph Cabral, KBTI's founder, began learning Braille to help his father. By 1996 Mr. Cabral had become a Library of Congress Certified Braillist. In 1998 he began research into how post-secondary education institutions provided Braille to Braille-reading students.

He was dismayed to learn that these institutions lagged woefully behind K-12 in both awareness and provision of Braille. For example, blind students often had to wait a week longer than their sighted classmates for class handouts and course materials. Often times, Brailled textbooks could not be located or produced at all.

In 2000 Mr. Cabral founded KBTI as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization in an effort to rectify this situation as well as provide quality Braille transcription to the general public. By mid-2000, KBTI began operating as both a training and production facility in properly formatted refreshable Braille transcription and manual BrailleWriter repair.