Lego bricks coded with braille are designed to help vision-impaired kids build and read. There's an online course for educators and the kits, launched in 2020, are free of charge to schools. Now The Guardian reports on the forthcoming wide availability of the bricks in stores.
From next month, shoppers will be able to buy packs of the bricks, which have studs corresponding to the braille version of numbers and letters with a printed version of the symbol or letter below, to use at home.
Lego hopes the initiative will help parents and siblings share in learning braille, and the packs will include ideas for a range of educational games that families can play together.
While some view braille as old-fashioned, given modern technology that can turn written text into spoken word, blind adults say they like the freedom to multitask by reading with their fingers while listening to other things.
Since it started developing the braille brick system, Lego hasn't been able to move without stepping on a request to make them available to consumers.
Rasmus Løgstrup, the Lego Group lead designer on braille bricks, said the company had been "inundated with thousands of requests to make [the bricks] more widely available".
He said: "We know this is a strong platform for social inclusion and can't wait to see families get creative and have fun playing with braille together."
