Words by Smiley Team
Every year on 4 January, World Braille Day commemorates the birthday of French educator Louis Braille who invented braille, a reading and writing system for visually impaired people.
As literacy is fundamental to modern education, braille offers a means for people with sight impediments to learn as easily as anyone else.
Since Louis Braille invented this system nearly 200 years ago, initiatives have adopted it around the world, opening up access to literature and learning to all. Here are some contemporary projects helping visually impaired people in 2022.
A victory for children’s disability rights advocates, braille Lego bricks helped close the gap for children with sight impairments. The little blocks feature the numbers zero to nine as well as mathematics symbols to encourage different challenges and learning opportunities. Each one is compatible with other Lego blocks so can supplement a child’s existing Lego set.
Created in honour of a Californian rancher who was blind, Earle Baum Center harnesses the combined power of technology and community to help those with sight loss to move forward independently with their lives. Through counselling, training and assistive technology, the centre guides people through the transition to accepting and learning to live with blindness.
To create inclusive communities across the UK, the Sight Loss Councils ensures visually impaired people have access to all the essential provisions they need. These include health and wellbeing facilities as well as employment.
In the first two weeks after its launch, a project led by the Tej Kohli Foundation cured 1,512 people of sight problems. The initiative aims to beat ‘poverty blindness’ in Nepal, one of the least developed countries in the world. In 2010, Kohli created the project after he witnessed a patient cured of severe sight impairments.
Seattle is commonly known as the birthplace of major tech enterprises. But it’s less well known as the home to another great innovation - the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library. They offer a huge range of multimedia resources as well as youth services and training sessions.
