Josh Bechard · Normal, Illinois
Software products, and the teams that build them well.
Normal Thought Technologies is a one-person software company. I sell two things: a document accessibility product called AccessibleNotes, and consulting for technology organizations that want to ship better work.
Product
AccessibleNotes
Subscription software. Turns handwritten and scanned material into documents a screen reader can actually read.
Services
Consulting
Engagements by the week or the project — technical practices, delivery process, product strategy, and hands-on build work.
The product
A photo of the whiteboard is a blank rectangle to a screen reader.
AccessibleNotes takes handwritten notes, scans, and whiteboard photos and returns real documents — structured, described, and validated. Upload a picture, get back something a student using assistive technology can read, search, and study from.
It handles the parts generic OCR gives up on: mathematical notation, stacked subscripts, Greek letters — typeset properly instead of flattened into noise.
Handwritten
Processed
Handwriting and math
Recognition tuned for real classroom pages, with equations rendered as clean LaTeX rather than guessed-at characters.
Structure, not just text
Headings, reading order, and descriptions for diagrams and images — the things assistive technology depends on.
Export that passes
PDF/UA-validated PDF, plus DOCX and HTML, so a document can be handed off with proof it meets the standard.
The services
Consulting for software organizations
I help software teams become high-performing through better technical practices, delivery process, product strategy, and culture. I'll work with leadership to define a roadmap for change, and I'll get my hands dirty on the implementation to drive results.
Engineering practices
Make the work easier to do
Testing, code review, branching, CI/CD, and the day-to-day habits that decide whether a team can change software safely. Assessment, a plan, then pairing with your engineers to put it in place.
Delivery process
Shorten the feedback loop
Planning, estimation, and release cadence rebuilt around smaller batches and visible flow, so problems surface in days instead of quarters.
Product strategy
Build the right thing
Getting clear on who the product is for and what to do next — roadmaps that survive contact with reality, and a way to decide what not to build.
Hands-on engineering
Ship alongside the team
Product and platform work as an embedded engineer — building features, untangling legacy systems, and leaving the team able to keep going without me.
How I work
Strategy and details, from the same person
Look around first
A short engagement to understand the codebase, the process, and the people — and to name the two or three things actually holding delivery back.
Agree on a roadmap
Sequenced changes with leadership, sized so each one pays off before the next starts. No binder, no reorganization for its own sake.
Do it with the team
I stay in the work — pairing, reviewing, shipping — so the change lands in habits rather than in a slide deck.
About
I'm Josh Bechard
I've spent my career building software and helping the organizations around it work better — as an engineer, a lead, and an outside set of eyes. Normal Thought Technologies is how I do both: a product I run, and a small consulting practice I keep deliberately small so the client I'm with gets my attention.
Based in Normal, Illinois. Remote work, with travel when being in the room matters.
Let's chat
Get some time on my calendar, or send a note about what you're working on. Either way you'll hear back from me, not an assistant.