Can Legos Help Teach Braille? A Look at the Innovative Technique

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BillTre
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Here is a NY TImes article about using special lego blocks for teaching Braille.
Braille is based upon the combinations of the presence of a bump in any of six positions. The most common lego block size has 8 bumps.
Six of the bump positions are used to encode the Braille while the rest of the space in the 8 bump sized block is used for a visually printed letter (for visual readers).
I think this is potentially a brillant idea for teaching Braille, which many blind people do not read.
This idea is being tested in a few countries and will be soon tried in several others.
 
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Interesting, thanks Bill. It would be nice if there were some way for a blind person alone to use these to help them learn Braille. It looks like it takes a teacher/parent/helper to help the learner to know what each pattern represents. Maybe there will be a "Speak and Spell" type add-on product that Legos will include in this package in the future.

Or even better, this would be a good cellphone App that would be able to read the Braille Legos (or other Braille) and say the letter/symbol out loud...

https://brailleworks.com/5-top-mobile-apps-for-the-blind/
 
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There are both Braille keyboards and a digital Braille display devices that pushes out bumps to make the Braille characters.
If it is language digitized, it should be computer speakable.

berkeman said:
a good cellphone App that would be able to read the Braille
This sounds like the language translation app I used to have on my phone, or a barcode reader.

berkeman said:
It looks like it takes a teacher/parent/helper to help the learner to know what each pattern represents.
I think a lot of people do better learning in a more social context anyway.
 

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