Oh, patents! Lego® Braille

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

On September 1, 2023, The Lego® Group launched Lego® Braille sets in English and French, with Spanish, German, and Italian sets available in early 2024 (1). Lego® Braille ushers in a new learning and teaching ecosystem. An ecosystem intended to include all blind or sight-impaired children and their teachers, into the world of Lego® bricks, and through the re-designed Lego® Braille bricks access to the symbolic world of literacy and numeracy.

The development of the Lego® Braille sets brought together a vast network of consultants, special education practitioners, sighted, blind or visually-impaired, in collaboration with The Lego® Foundation, members of the UK, Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), the French National Institute for Blind Youth, and equivalents throughout Europe. Indeed, developing the Lego® Braille sets was also an opportunity to foster vibrant dialogue and collaboration for training and sharing lesson plans. An opportunity to create a teaching and learning community, to ensure the successful implementation and use of the new Lego® Braille sets, for the development of literacy and numeracy, using braille.

Launching of the new Lego® Braille sets thus also comes with the support of the Legobraillebricks.com website. A website that offers lesson plans, shared across the globe, with training videos available via YouTube.

As a result, the new 2023 Lego® Braille sets remain faithful to the original ideas of the 1932 Danish founder of Legos®, Ole Kirk Kristiansen. Original ideas of learning through play, which gave Legos® their name, derived from the portemanteau terms “Leg + Godt”, meaning “play well” in Danish. A magical world of play bricks, which has enchanted children for almost a century, now also finally re-designed for blind children to learn through play. Re-designed bricks for learning braille through play, the tactile language for the blind, developed in France by Louis Braille, in 1824. A tactile language that enables the blind or sight-impaired to read and write.   

National Braille Press © 2000

Lego® Braille bricks are 2 x 4 Lego® bricks, according to the specifications of the original Kristiansen toy brick invention. An invention recited in US3005282, titled Toy building brick, granted on October 24, 1961. However, Lego® Braille bricks have one row of studs completely or partially removed to allow for the remaining studs to be positioned, according to the raised dot formation of the braille code. The braille code comprises 63 combinations for letters, numbers and punctuation marks, in English. Lego® Braille bricks also indicate the braille code in print, on each block, for sighted users. (See images above of the Lego® Braille bricks, and the National Braille Press Engish braille alphabet code.)

Lego® Braille bricks are deemed especially advantageous for children six years of age plus, and children with additional disabilities, because the re-designed bricks are large, and easily manipulated braille letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Indeed, the size and pleasurable manipulation of the bricks offer the possibility of easily combining and recognizing whole words (not only letters), and eventually structuring whole sentences, or computing mathematical operations, directly on the provided Lego® boards. Conversely, special education teachers and practitioners can easily prepare quite sturdy materials, which are also removable and permutable, on the boards. Manipulatives with which children can play, create and learn, without the frustrations, difficulty or limitations of fixed, and much smaller, braille-embossed print.

For anyone (big and small), who has enjoyed endlessly building and re-building with Legos®, this creative pleasure, together with a huge learning bonus, are now accessible to the blind or sight-impaired, unlimited.

  

Note 

(1) Lego® Braille sets are offered to qualified special education teachers and institutions.  

References
Lego® Braille Bricks (website)
https://legobraillebricks.com/
Lego® (website)
www.lego.com
Musée Louis Braille - National Institute for Blind Youth (Est. 1785).
https://museelouisbraille.com/en/institut-des-jeunes-aveugles

National Braille Press

https://www.nbp.org/

Ole Kirk Kristiansen

https://www.lego.com/en-us/history/articles/ole-kirk-kristiansen-s-childhood-and-youth/
The Lego® Foundation – Learning through play.
https://learningthroughplay.com/
The Lego® Group
https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group
United Kingdom Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB)
https://www.rnib.org.uk/