Giving Compass' Take:

· Global Citizen discusses Lego's initiative to help children with low vision or blindness master reading by providing them with braille blocks of the entire alphabet.

· How is this initiative a step to help improve the potential for disabled students? How can donors support efforts to expand access to this education tool?  

· Check out this article to learn about a program that translates text to braille for blind users.

Lego is piloting a set of 250 blocks that together cover the entire braille alphabet to help children who are blind or have low vision learn how to read.

The development is a victory for disability rights advocates who have long been calling for efforts to close the literacy gap for children with blindness and low vision. The blocks will be distributed free of charge to partner organizations that can then give sets to learning centers, schools, and daycares.

Although mastery of braille correlates to higher levels of educational attainment and greater career success later in life for children, the reading system has been falling out of favor in recent years as digital learning tools become more popular. In the US for instance, 10% of blind children are learning braille today, compared to 50% in the 1950s.

The new Lego blocks, along with other recent efforts to adopt braille efficiency, could help reverse this trend.

Read the full article about Lego's initiative to help blind children learn by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen.