A Toy to Help Kids Learn Braille



Art student Danielle Pecora from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn designed this ball to help children learn how to read Braille:

Looking a bit like a stiff Koosh ball, it has 26 magnetic pegs, each depicting a letter of the alphabet in Latin on one side and Braille on the other. The object's to fit the pegs into 26 circular indents in the ball that are themselves embossed in Braille letters. "A" in Braille, for instance, is a single dot, so you'd find the peg with one dot, then match it to the spot on the ball with one dot. An electronic device in the ball chimes when you get a letter right. It'll also verbalize what letter you're touching when you run your fingers over the indents.


Link | Photo: Pratt Institute

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@Ellie recently the New York Times and other newspapers published articles about the demise of Braille. A lot of visually-impaired people are now using audio only. There is legitimate fear that Braille is losing a foothold within the Blind community. So @Ted is not wrong.
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@Ted - Braille is alive and well. Not everyone likes or can afford computers. Paper and stylus are a lot cheaper than a 500 dollar (usually more) print reader.
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My son is visually impaired, and not a braille reader, but I can see the value of this, however, a lot of blind kids are tactilely defensive (My son certainly is. He is supposed to touch everything, but he hates it. Poor kid.) so as long as it chimes and doesn't buzz, I can see the benefit.

Also, colors are a good idea, because kids with low vision can often identify contrast, like black and yellow or black and white.
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