For adults
Braille and the fingerspelling alphabet step by step: for parents, teachers, support workers, people losing their sight, the curious.
Braille course
6 short lessons: the letters, the ones in your language, writing, reading words. Exercises with checks, progress saved on this device.
StartFingerspelling alphabet
5 lessons: the letters of your country’s sign language and reading fingerspelled words.
StartPerkins keyboard
Write in Braille with six keys, like on a Perkins Braille writer or a Braille display.
TryFor teachers
A 30-minute activity, World Braille Day, how to include a blind or deaf pupil.
OpenIf your sight fades as an adult
Many people learn Braille after 40 or 60, because of an eye disease or an accident. It can be done: fingertips can be trained at any age, and Braille is useful even just for labelling medicines, spices and buttons. The first step is to contact the association for blind people in your country, which runs Braille and independent living courses. This website helps you get started and practise.
If there’s a deaf person in your family or at work
The fingerspelling alphabet is used to write names and new words, but sign language is much more. Many deaf people lip-read, others use sign language, others both: ask how they prefer to communicate. To learn the language, courses with deaf teachers from the national associations are the right way.