http://www.afb.org/braillebug/
The Braille Bug is a link on the page for the American Federation of the Blind (AFB). If you go there, be sure you have your speakers turned on. You’ll smile as the kid-friendly voice welcomes you to this site.
This is an interactive site. Children (and adult children) are free to change the colors of the site, to participate in games and secret messages which translate their print entries into simbraille (smulated braille) on a computer screen, to join a braille reading club, or to read historical information about Helen Keller and Louis Braille. It claims to be a fully accessible website.
The parent/teacher section of the website defines the purpose:
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) created the Braille Bug web site to teach sighted children about braille, and to encourage literacy among all children. AFB—a national nonprofit founded in 1921 and the organization to which Helen Keller devoted more than 40 years of her life—addresses the critical issues, such as literacy, that are facing America’s ten million blind or visually impaired children and adults.
Literacy is a critical skill… because reading and writing is how we communicate with eachother and with our world.
3 responses so far ↓
1
Julie Durando
// Sep 2, 2005 at 5:19 pm
So glad you picked this website. It is one of the good ones! I used it as part of a lesson for on Braille for general education students last year. They loved it! You did a nice job describing the site.
2
Laurie
// Sep 2, 2005 at 9:56 pm
Great resource. I have been doing some work with AFB on creating an online course to teach people to prepare textbook source files to be ready to be brailled. I’ve learned a ton in this project and have an incredible respect for the need to braille and the process that it takes to get it done right.
3
agnes ferris
// Sep 9, 2005 at 2:53 am
Hello Sheila.
When I read your accurate and great critique of this site, it sparked my interest for these reasons. I’m a very strong proponent of braille literacy; I’m always excited to learn about unique and fun options for educating people about braille. This will be one website I will share with my current and prospective university students pursuing degrees in the field of human rehabilitation.
Your mentioning the website’s statement about being accessible peaked my curiosity about how well my version of JAWS, the most current one, would read the simulated braille. It did great! It would read me the dot combinations for the letters. For example, when it read the letter b, it said “dots one two”.
If I may, I’d like to offer a suggestion about how you could make this review more educational. It would be helpful to hear how you would use this website with your students.