LEGO Braille Bricks shortlisted for Design of the Year award

The LEGO Foundation’s Braille Bricks have been shortlisted for a 2020 Design of the Year award.

Specialist insurer Beazley is the company behind the awards, which are split across six different categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Product, and Transport. The nominees in each category will be on display at London’s Design Museum until March 28, 2021.

You’ll find LEGO Braille Bricks in the Product category, alongside 23 other innovative designs. Its competitors include IKEA’s Förändring, a homeware collection designed to reduce air pollution, and K-Briq, a sustainable building brick. (That’s a real brick, not a toy one.)

A single winner will be chosen from each category, with judges then selecting an overall winner from that pool. The final verdict will be announced on November 26.

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LEGO Braille Bricks are the result of a collaboration between the LEGO Foundation and charities around the world. Each one has a specific combination of studs on top, corresponding with a specific letter or number in the Braille alphabet. That character is also printed on, so sighted and visually-impaired kids can learn and play together.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People is currently helping to deliver the bricks to kids in the UK. “We are excited to bring the LEGO Braille Brick toolkits to UK classrooms to help children learn how to read and write braille in a fun and engaging way,” says David Clarke, RNIB Director of Services.

“Braille is an important tool and these inclusive toolkits will make a real difference to children with vision impairment, allowing them to play and interact with their sighted classmates.”

You can’t buy LEGO Braille Bricks, but if you’re a local sensory service, you can request them.

To continue to support the work of Brick Fanatics, please buy your LEGO sets from LEGO.com and Amazon using our affiliate links.

Author Profile

Chris Wharfe
I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

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