Lego Wants To Helps Children Learn Braille Through Play
Lego has unveiled an upcoming new line of bricks aimed at helping blind and visually impaired children learn Braille in a “playful and engaging way.”
The new Lego Braille Bricks will help children to learn the touch writing language while playing. The idea was proposed to the Lego Foundation by The Danish Association of the Blind in 2011 and Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind based in Brazil in 2017.
Lego says the new braille bricks in 2020 and will ultimately be distributed for free through the partner organizations. The new bricks will feature studs that represent the characters of the Braille alphabet and will have printed characters for sighted users, the new bricks will also be “fully compatible” with existing Legos.
The press release also revealed that the set will include about 250 bricks featuring the complete Braille alphabet, as well as some numbers and math symbols.
A spokesperson for Lego told CNN that the company had gone on to develop prototypes with the two organizations — Danish Association of the Blind and Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind — as well as the British charities Leonard Cheshire and Royal National Institute of Blind People, and the Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted.
The Braille brick are undergoing testing in schools with languages including Danish, Portuguese, Norweigan, and English. Later this year other language versions will be available with French, Spanish, and German.
By: Maytinee Kramer
