NazirBuilding with Lego bricks has remained a significant and influential activity for children worldwide, largely due to its universal appeal that transcends location, language, and ability.
Recently, the company has taken its Braille Bricks, designed as an educational toy for children with visual impairments or those interested in learning Braille script, and made them accessible for purchase by anyone interested.
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Although the set was initially introduced in 2019, it was distributed as a kit available for free to a limited audience, including individuals and organizations focused on educating visually impaired children.
Following a period of gathering feedback over a couple of years, Lego has now opted to make the Braille Bricks set widely accessible.
Comprising 287 unique pieces, most of which are standard 2×4 Lego bricks, this set provides ample space for each letter of the 2×3-dot Braille alphabet along with a visible label.
This feature allows the Braille Bricks to serve as educational aids for both sighted individuals and those with visual impairments.
Accompanying the set are a reference sheet detailing the letters and corresponding bricks, as well as starter projects to kick-start the learning process.
Martine Abel-Williamson, President of the World Blind Union, highlighted the significance of this development: “For the blind community, braille is not just literacy, it’s our entry to independence and inclusion into this world, and to have LEGO Braille Bricks made available for the wider public is a massive step forward to ensuring more children will want to learn braille in the first place,” as stated in Lego’s announcement of the set’s availability.
This introduction of the Play with Braille Lego set represents a progressive move to extend specialized Braille learning tools from educational institutions to households.
Additionally, there is an ongoing effort to enhance the availability and affordability of refreshable Braille displays, which would offer e-reader-like functionality and the ability to compose text.
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The emphasis on accessibility extends to digital products, although challenges remain in ensuring that people with disabilities can seamlessly interact with complex web apps and services.
The New Lego Playset For The Blind
Lego’s educational playset for blind is a new product that aims to help children with visual impairment learn through play using Lego bricks. The playset consists of two baseplates and over 250 bricks in five colors: white, yellow, green, red and blue, with studs that correspond to numbers and letters in the braille code. The playset also comes with a guidebook that provides instructions and activities for learning braille and other skills.
The playset was inspired by Matthew Shifrin, a blind entrepreneur who learned to build Lego sets with the help of a friend who wrote down the building steps for him in braille. Shifrin later collaborated with Lego to create text-based instructions for other visually impaired fans, which led to the development of the playset.
The playset is part of Lego’s commitment to make play more inclusive and accessible for all children. The playset is compatible with all other Lego products, and each brick also shows the printed version of the symbol, letter or number. The playset also supports the use of the OpenAI Platform ³, which allows users to fine-tune the base GPT-3.5 Turbo model with their own data and access their custom models via the OpenAI API.
The playset is currently available in English, French, Spanish, German, Danish and Norwegian, and more languages will be added soon. The playset can be purchased online from the official Lego website or from selected retailers. The playset costs $89.99 and is suitable for children aged 6 and above.
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