LEGO taught braille by encoding it into existing bricks

Braille literacy among blind and visually impaired children has been declining for decades in many countries as audio technology substitutes for tactile reading, and the standard learning tools — braille slates, dedicated braille-teaching kits — are specialized, often institutional products, disconnected from the ordinary toys sighted classmates and siblings play with.

The Danish Association of the Blind first proposed the idea to the LEGO Foundation in 2011, and the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind in Brazil raised it again in 2017; the eventual answer wasn't a new braille-teaching product, but bricks molded so the arrangement of studs on top of an otherwise standard LEGO brick corresponds to a letter or number in braille, with the same character printed on top for sighted users to read simultaneously.

Encoded braille into standard LEGO studs, so blind and sighted children share the same brick, using existing tooling and distribution to give kits away free.

Encoding braille into existing bricks reused LEGO's manufacturing and distribution, cutting costs.

The bricks remained compatible with all LEGO sets, integrating into normal play.

Printed letters on the bricks let blind and sighted children share the same activity.

Free distribution to schools was possible because development costs were low.

Adapt your core platform to serve an underserved group within the mainstream product, rather than building a separate, isolating tool.

LEGO Braille Bricks launched in seven countries in August 2020 (Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, UK, USA) with immediate plans to reach twenty countries across eleven languages by early 2021, distributed free to schools and organizations for the blind rather than sold as a retail product, following pilot testing conducted over nearly two years across five countries with blind community input.