MPower: Promoting braille literacy for visually impaired youth

Since most Mathru teachers are also visually impaired, they give students exercises using a slate and stylus and evaluate performance by reading braille written by the student on paper. One student, we will call her Raksha to protect her identity, was diagnosed as not being able to write braille. Raksha’s writing assignments usually resulted in a single braille cell with all dots embossed. When Raksha tested our BT, to the teachers’ delight, the audio feedback demonstrated her ability to write braille. Raksha had been writing every letter in the same cell, thus creating the completely embossed single cell on paper. This was not evident to her blind teacher because the teacher could only feel the end result of the writing on paper; moreover, Raksha was unable to communicate well and explain what she was writing. Because our BT is able to interpret and read out aloud each letter as soon as the student finishes writing it, the teacher realized that Raksha understood how to write braille letters but had not understood that it was necessary to write each letter in a separate cell. In this way, the BT acted as a diagnostic tool: it highlighted Raksha’s unique difficulties and provided insight to the blind teacher. Based on this early experience, TechBridgeWorld has built several customizable features and games into the BT to meet students’ diverse learning needs. Members from our team conducted field studies, developed multiple BT hardware and software versions, customized the BT for multiple braille languages, and created diverse educational activities and games.