The LEGO Group has announced a pilot program to make LEGO sets more accessible for children with vision disabilities. The LEGO Audio and Braille Building Instructions are now available in English through an accessible website.
The initiative comes from Matthew Shifrin, who was born blind, and it uses AI technology to give those with vision disabilities more accessibility to building instructions.
“I had a friend, Lilya, who would write down all the building steps for me so that I could upload them into a system that allowed me to read the building steps on a Braille reader through my fingers. She learned Braille to engage with me and support my LEGO passion, and then spent countless hours translating LEGO instructions into Braille.” said Shifrin.
“This is extremely important for blind children because there aren’t a lot of places where we can say, ‘Look Mom and Dad! I built this on my own… I did this’“ says Shifrin. “For blind children, we don’t have access to what sighted kids are used to. LEGO bricks enable us to learn about our environment, to see the world. It is so important because blind kids get left out of a lot of social stuff, especially in elementary school. But LEGO building is one of the things we can do.”
When Lilya sadly passed away in 2017 Matthew was inspired to honour her memory by ensuring others benefitted from her idea of creating LEGO building instructions for those with no or limited sight. Through a friend at the MIT Media Lab, he was then introduced to the Creative Play Lab at the LEGO Group.
