LEGO® Braille Bricks — Play-Based Braille Literacy Co-Designed with Blind Communities

In 2011 the Danish Association of the Blind proposed to the LEGO Foundation that the eight studs on a 2x4 brick are close enough to a six-dot Braille cell to teach literacy through play. Brazil's Fundação Dorina Nowill para Cegos re-proposed the idea in 2017, and after several years of testing with blind communities in Denmark, Brazil, the UK, Norway, Germany, France and the US, LEGO Braille Bricks launched on 20 August 2020 in those seven countries, with kits of 300+ studded bricks covering the alphabet, numbers 0-9 and math symbols.
In Brazil, the Dorina Nowill Foundation — based in São Paulo — runs the program as the exclusive local distributor: per the foundation's own published figures, 19,003 kits have been distributed free of charge to 7,397 schools across 239 partner municipalities, with 18,140 educators enrolled in related training delivered together with UNESP and UNOESTE universities, targeting children aged 4-10 in the pre-literacy and literacy stages.
Neither LEGO nor the foundation has published a controlled evaluation of literacy gains; the public record documents distribution and enrollment scale and qualitative testimonials from teachers and families, not measured reading outcomes, so the evidence here should be read as reach and institutional uptake rather than proven learning impact.

Read the full analysis: https://fundacaodorina.org.br/braille-bricks/