Blocks magazine archive: Learning braille with LEGO bricks
Posted by Huw,
With Blocks about to launch the 80th edition of the monthly magazine, there’s one heck of a back catalogue. That’s now opening up, with print subscribers getting free access to a digital library containing every single issue published. It contains over 9,000 pages of LEGO features, reviews, build guides and more.
All the information on getting a Blocks subscription, including the extra subscriber benefits, is available here.
In the last of the articles from the archive that we are exclusively sharing this week, the LEGO Foundation’s Stine Storm explains how the concept came about, while David Clarke and Caireen Sutherland from the Royal National Institute of Blind People discuss why the bricks are useful and how they are helping children.
‘We didn't come up with the idea ourselves,’ declares the LEGO Foundation’s Stine Storm. ‘We were actually, over a number of years, contacted by various blind organisations encouraging us to look into this opportunity because it's such an obvious fit.’
The Senior Play & Health Specialist is passionately talking about the new LEGO Braille Bricks, which are now being rolled out. With the LEGO Foundation working with children around the world to improve their access to play, young people with vision impairment are now gaining from the Foundation’s significant resources.
‘Braille is a section of dots in a formation of two by three, which resembles a LEGO brick,’ says Stine. When looking at a LEGO brick, it seems so obvious; braille is a system of touch reading and writing for people with vision impairment. Letters and symbols represented by raised dot patterns, always part of a two by three cell.
Developed by Louis Braille in the 1800s, it is read by moving the hand or hands from left to right along each line. For children, it’s a way for them to learn to read if their vision prevents them doing so in the traditional way.
Back to the concept of Braille Bricks, Stine elaborates: ‘We simply didn't have a natural fit within the organisation. But the LEGO Foundation launched a new department called New Ventures.’ In 2018, the team started looking into the potential that the project had. ‘We weren’t the experts in braille, so we joined forces with a lot of blind organisations, those that had contacted us as well as some others.’
Why braille matters
One such organisation is the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), responsible for UK distribution.
‘There comes a certain point in a child's education, where if their vision is so poor or completely absent that print is no longer viable in terms of the size that you would need it to be. We would at that point look to introduce braille. Braille is easier taught when children are younger, when they're more adaptable, when they've got better tactile skills,’ says Caireen Sutherland, RNIB Principal Education Officer.
‘That said, learning braille is really, really challenging. Even when you start young, there's so many skills that are needed. Everything is based on a configuration of those six dots, so it's pretty mind blowing and complicated – especially if you're teaching that to a child who is only just of reading age.’
With young children better equipped to learn braille and also at the perfect age for LEGO bricks, combining the two provides a real opportunity to help them learn. Learning braille has also been shown to lead to better outcomes for people with vision impairment.
‘Statistics show that if you know braille, you have a higher likelihood of going on to further education and becoming self-sufficient,’ says Stine. ‘These skills are learned at an early age. And that's why we wanted to focus on children, so they are not left behind, so that they obtain these abilities and follow their desires. The purpose is to give them the agency to do what they want.’
‘The critical thing for me is that a lot of learning is done as a child through play. This isn't about being sat behind a book or the lessons I used to have,’ says David Clarke, RNIB Director of Services.
‘There just aren't new resources coming onto the market that are innovative, and exciting and fun. It's quite a lot of old fashioned stuff, the stories that are done in braille are probably the same ones that David learned Braille through,’ Caireen agrees. ‘Something like this is really exciting because it's mainstream and frankly, cool.’
Organisations like RNIB were carefully selected by The LEGO Foundation to reach as many children as possible. ‘We did this purposely through these institutions and systems because we wanted to ensure the longevity of the bricks, that the boxes can be used again and again and again by the children in need,’ Stine confirms. ‘LEGO bricks don't wear out, you can use them generation after generation. We also wanted to ensure that that's the case here, because it is not for profit. No teachers are paying for the teaching materials nor the toolkits. It is entirely non profit and the partners have also signed up to this.’
Developing Braille Bricks
Putting the LEGO Braille Bricks set together took some careful thought and testing. ‘To try and keep complexity low, we've had to make some tough decisions in terms of what's actually in the toolkit,’ Stine says. ‘We couldn't allow each and every partner to have a wish list of what they wanted in the kit. It's the basic alphabet in a given language, as well as the mathematical symbols and key punctuation marks.
‘We could have kept adding bricks, but you ended up with too many bricks in each toolkit. A child also has to be able to find the bricks, so it's finding that balance between not having too many and not too little. It's a bit like a set of Scrabble, the frequency of letters is the same as the frequency used in a given language. There are, for instance, more vowels than consonants.’
It is not just the physical Braille Bricks that make this opportunity possible though, it’s also the educational materials that support them. Schemes of work that fit with the curriculum are provided along with the actual box of elements.
‘This is all about creativity and innovation. It's some simple ideas and activities from which the teachers can almost hijack it themselves and come up with their own ideas. To try and foster this co-creation we set up a community of practice – a Facebook group where we invited a lot of these practitioners in to start discussing how they would use the toolkits and the training,’ says Stine.
‘As with anything, you put things in the hands of people who are born to teach and they will find the most unbelievable imaginative uses for them,’ David expands. ‘When we started doing maths, one of the teachers got hold of it and just produced this amazing scheme of work around using it. It was a lightbulb for me, you create a really great kit of 300 bricks with various signs and shapes and letter, then off you go and it's been brilliant to see people being innovative and making the learning experience exciting.’
Learning together
One of the strengths LEGO Braille Bricks has is in allowing young people with visual impairment to learn alongside their peers. After a first round of testing, a modification to the bricks made this possible.
‘We included print on bricks so that you could teach both a sighted child and a blind child alongside each other,’ Stine explains. ‘That's very important because at The LEGO Foundation we're all about building a breadth of skills. The 21st century skills like communication, collaboration, joint problem solving, creative thinking – all these things happen when you get children together. That's when the magic happens, when they start collaborating and all these amazing ideas come up. A blind child is cognitively as well developed as a sighted child, they just have a different approach to reading and obtaining knowledge.’
By having print on the bricks, sighted children can identify the symbol that it represents, while children with vision impairment can use the pattern of studs to identify it.
David Clarke considers this to be a huge game-changer: ‘A lot of this learning will be through play, enjoyment and fun, and not a special skill that you have to learn because you're blind. It will make it completely normal experience within the classroom.
‘I remember my own experience, being dragged off to typing lessons, because at that time people said, “the only way you're going to be able stay in touch with other people is through the written word is from a typewriter.” I never forget the time that my typing class clashed with the first launch of the space shuttle, and I was like, “really? I've got to go and type?” It was being dragged out of something to go and do something special.’
‘That risks a horrible isolation, social issues with your peer group, a lack of opportunity to take part in lots of key activities when you're young,’ Caireen says. ‘Braille Bricks offer that inclusion so you can now be doing early stages braille skills as a group, when before this that wasn't ever an option because you needed a whole load of adults there to translate, to say “those dots mean this and that.” Then it’s less powerful as soon as an adult is interfering with children interacting with one another.’
Braille Bricks worldwide
The LEGO Foundation has big, global goals for Braille Bricks. ‘You're familiar with LEGO and how we produce bricks – but imagine we have one mould, one colour, but an infinite amount of print,’ Stine says. ‘The combinations for these different language versions is enormous. There was a lot of work that went into the master data, working with blind organisations in each country, in each language version that we set out to develop.
‘We started with the Latin based languages, because there are some similarities there. It's something we could read and understand. This becomes much more complex when you're talking about Arabic, for instance, or Asian languages that you need special knowledge and insight in order to understand. We have to see how does the braille language translate into these languages. So it's not a simple translation exercise.’
Initial testing took place in Denmark, Norway, the UK and Brazil. ‘Brazil was because it was a Brazilian foundation called Dorina Nowill Foundation that actually showed us a prototype that they'd handmade themselves. We tested in those four countries first, meaning that we already had four languages in place.
‘Then we tested in four more countries, adding three new languages. We added Spanish, French and German. We also tested it in the US. We've now developed 11 language versions that cover all of Western Europe. And with those languages, potentially we can also go to South America, Africa.’
While there is a huge amount of work to do to expand Braille Bricks to additional languages and find partnership models to distribute the toolkits in each country, it’s work that the LEGO Foundation is committed to, as Stine illustrates when explaining the challenges the team has to consider:
‘The model we've used in Western Europe may not work in South America and Africa, because it's a completely different situation there. There's no established blind organisations, there's no official networks or schooling. We'd also probably have to adapt the materials to that given context, we can't rely on the fact that they have wireless internet access.’
Hands-on experience
In the UK, LEGO Braille Bricks are already being used by children. Seven-year-old Laurel Allen, from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, has had the opportunity to use the toolkit. ‘I love using it to do my spelling homework, it’s the most fun ever,’ she remarks. Her mother has also noticed that it is making the learning more fun for Laurel.
Evie Roberts is just starting her secondary education and also has access to Braille Bricks. ‘I like how they are very tactile. The surfaces are super smooth and the dots are really clear. The dots on the bricks are bigger than the braille I usually use but I got used to that very quickly,’ she says.
For children with vision impairment, Braille Bricks can now be part of their education. Bringing a new, fun tool into the mix that allows them to learn alongside sighted children has huge potential. The LEGO Foundation, along with organisations like RNIB, is helping to provide these children with an indispensable skill.
‘Braille offers a tactile medium to access the written word,’ Caireen summarises. ‘We would never say to a sighted child, “you can't have access to any printed books”. And that would be like saying to a blind child, “you can't have access to printed word”. That's why braille is absolutely crucial in a child's education, I think it is one of many things that they should be offered in terms of their education. Then they are then able as adults to choose what their preferred medium is.’
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8 comments on this article
I think this is the best article from this archive yet
That is awesome! I'd heard about the Braille bricks, but it's nice to read more in-depth background.
@TomKazutara said:
"I don't understand why we can't buy those ."
I'd imagine production is limited and so they're focussing distribution to the organizations for the blind that can make best direct use of the bricks.
If you need them you'll be given them.
@Huw said:
"If you need them you'll be given them. "
Which is fine and a great gesture, but it couldn't hurt to produce more and sell them to interested people like myself.
If you want to buy them there's a lot on ebay right now for 379 USD.
SOO many collectors will want these for the stud placement!
I’d just like to get four of them. About a year after Fukushima, NOVA on PBS ran an episode about the incident, which included a lot of firsthand accounts. People talked about seeing houses and cars being swept away, and watching friends or family members be carried off to their presumed deaths (a lot of them were never recovered, so all they really had was eyewitness testimony combined with them never resurfacing to figure out what happened). Pretty much every person had the same response, saying they didn’t know how they could go on with their lives, after experiencing that much loss. Then towards the end of the episode, they noted that the cherry trees started blooming, which has a huge cultural history in Japan. And every single one of the people they interviewed had the same response, which was that the cherry blossoms came out, and it was like dark, stormy skies cleared up and the sun came out. Suddenly they had all found the will to go on with their own lives after surviving that disaster.
So I ended up building an 8x8 vignette of a sepukku ceremony, using parts from a couple of the CMF samurai (S3?) under a cherry tree in full bloom, on a cliff overlooking a river. The river surface is built with rectangular trans-clear tiles, and cherry blossom petals floating on the surface are represented by 1x1 round tiles. The whole river surface is smooth, and on a single plane, but if the negative space between the petals had bumps, you could read “(ch)(er)ry” in I think British Braille (to make it fit in eight studs, I needed to use a system that includes single characters for common two-letter combos). If I could get those same four characters in these Braille bricks, I could take that to shows where I was displaying this vignette, and it would be a lot easier for attendees to visualize. Maybe I’ll contact them and present my case to see if I can get those four bricks. The worst that can happen is they say no.
@LegoTiger72376:
So many collectors want them because they’re rare, they’re unusual, they’re not available to the general public _at_all_, and they want NPU credit for working them into a MOC. There’s almost nothing functional about these that can’t be recreated with 4-8pcs, which means they’re basically POOP. People who are freaking out about the idea of using these in MOCs haven’t really thought through the problems:
1. They only come in five colors (red, yellow, medium azure, lime, and white).
2. Each shape may even be exclusive to one of the five colors.
3. Every brick has one or more large, black characters printed on one end.
You’d basically end up with a more amplified version of the problem with the multi-colored letter tiles, which is that you don’t have as much control over the look of the parts as you’d think, or hope you would. You’d either have to hide the text (at which point their use makes even less sense), or remove it. Unless you also need to stick long parts like axles up into the brick, or the layered look would completely ruin the aesthetic of what you’re building (and you luck out on available colors), the main point of using these in a MOC would be to brag about how you built Braille bricks into a MOC, or to use them exactly as intended and incorporate Braille text into your MOC. And besides my very simple potential application, that’s something I could definitely see being done. Imagine a Mindstorms device that performs a task when one of the attendees presses a button. Write out the new instructions using these bricks, and now visually impaired attendees can figure it out without needing someone else to explain it to them.