BrailleBlocks: Computational Braille Toys for Collaborative Learning

Braille literacy has fallen in recent years, and many blind children now grow up without learning Braille. However, learning Braille can increase employment chances and improve literacy skills. We introduce BrailleBlocks, a system to help visually impaired children learn and practice Braille alongside a sighted parent. BrailleBlocks comprises a set of tangible blocks and pegs, each block representing a Braille cell, and an associated application with games. The system automatically tracks and recognizes the blocks so that parents can follow along even if they cannot read Braille. We conducted a user study to test BrailleBlocks with five families, with five parents and six visually impaired children. The contributions of this work are a novel approach to Braille education toys, observations of how visually impaired children and sighted parents used this system together, their insights on current issues with Braille educational tools, and actionable feedback for future Braille-based learning tools.