Category: Crafts and Hobbies
My friend and I have invented a system which makes Lego sets buildable independently by blind people! You can learn more here: http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/fr/fr35/2/fr350206.htm Thanks!
Interesting, but Lego, is something you feel, so really easy for a blind person to do?
Imagination seems the most thing you need when playing with Lego's?
Sure, you might not have it color corenated, but then if you've been blind from birth, that not matter anyway?
Interesting.
Hey cool. I bet this could also work with the Lego robot set I got for graduation. At the school for the blind where I live there's a robotics team. The students are encouraged to write programs for the robots, but they're usually not able to build them because it takes too long.
And who says we're too old to play with Legos?
Wayne, I was thinking this very thing but didn't wanna say it.
ForeReel, What you're saying is correct. Blind people can totally free-build with Lego independently. I'm focused on making the inaccessible graphical instructions to build what's on the box, accessible to blind people. Building instructions introduce a blind builder to techniques that they simply would not have thought of, and provide insight into how mechanisms work, that they might not necissarily be able to come up with on their own. Voyager, I'm working on instructions to make the Mindstorms robots you mentioned buildable independently by blind people. Any new instructions that are created will hopefully end up on legofortheblind.com in the next few weeks. Note that since we are a two-person team, the instructions for the Mindstorms robots may take some time. I will keep you all posted on this board/topic of any new updates. Thanks!
The website is now up and running! To see what sets we've made accessible/have instructions for, go to legofortheblind.com and click on Instructions! Happy Building!
Omg, dude, this is so tempting. I have a lot of stuff to think about for Christmas this year. :)
omg, dude, thank you! Now, I want a lego set. :)
Oh I see now! Awesome idea; will go check it out. :)
I do love lego! :)
Might have to pretend I'm buying a set for someone else.
Laughing.
That's pretty freaken sweet! I have a 12-year-old boy who grew up playing Legos. I always wanted to help him build his cool creations because he loved them so much. Luckily, he was content with me either free-building alone side him or sorting his pieces.
I think I'm going to check out the website and be happy that he hasn't completely outgrown them for this Christmas.
Can I say I'm buying him a gift too?
I wants that super set, and...
Laughing.
I'll be updating the site periodically adding instructions for new sets, and instructions for kits from other companies such as Snap Circuits and LittleBits. I'm also hoping to add some instructions on how to do Origami as a blind person. I'll keep you posted!
Awesome! I need to look at the site. I seriously might get this for Christmas because it just sounds cool.
I would totally buy a set if I could afford one.
BrainCraft, (a psychology/neurology Youtubee channel), just made a great video about Lego For The Blind! http://youtu.be/hVy5E2DZkKM Imprecator, some of the sets I've described on legofortheblind.com are small, (7-8 dollars) and have 50-100 pieces in them. You could start with something simple like the Arctic Snowmobile (7 dollars on Amazon) to see how the system works.
This sounds really awesome. I used to free build as a kid, which went over well
except for my sisters who were probably put off by the lack of proper color
coordination. But there's a place for both: Nice to see the patterns and how to
build them. I'll have to check this out.
Super excited about this, thanks for sharing Matt!
Thanks so much to everyone for watching!
Love this idea! Might I suggest a few things though after buying one of the cheaper sets to try out. Could you include a key in the file or somewhere on the site of the shorthand you use? I could understand some of it, but a lot of it I'm still unsure of. Also, a friend of mine who's also trying this out suggested possibly including a sort of index of all the pieces included in the set somewhere in the instructions. A lot of the descriptions of some of the odd pieces aren't too clear, and I think this would make things go along much more smoothly. I know this isn't exactly something that would be easy to do, but I believe he mentioned many of the sets already include something like this in their booklets so I don't think it would be too difficult to find some way of transcribing that so you wouldn't have to start from scratch.
Deadnight Warrior, Thanks so much for the tips. I will put up a short-hand of abbreviations on the site in the near future. Creating parts lists will be doable, though a little difficult, since we've made custom names for the pieces, so that new builders don't have to rely on Lego's part names, which take up a lot of space in context and are more confusing to new users. Example: Instead of using lego's name of "technic axle with stop ring," we thought it would be easier to say "ribbed stick with a nut," thus making the descriptions more general and less Lego-specific. So in context, saying Put a ribbed stick with a nut, into the third hole from the left, is much more user-friendly then saying put a technic axle with stop ring into the third hole from the left. Do you agree? What set did you test our instructions on? Thanks so much for trying them out! Matthew
We could try and change our part names to Lego's names to simplify the process, but we made up our names as we went along, some being better, and some being more confusing, than Legos' names. Then as we built more sets, we'd accidentally change the names/make new ones. So at this point, it's become a bit of a mess. The only way to make sure you have the right parts/to check that the parts are correct/know which one is which, is to build with a sighted person, and have them check that you're using the right parts. We try to keep the part names as uniform as we can, so once you see a part in one set, the name carries over into the other instructions that we've made. Here's a list of abbreviations: Ver = vertically. Hor = horizontally. Symm = symetrically. F = flat. FS = flat smooth. S = smooth. PP = previous piece. Thanks!
I've just updated the site with instructions for the Palace Cinema and CHopper Transporter sets. I will shortly update it with COle's Dragon and the Detective's office sets as well.
what a cool idea you have come up with and would be so very helpful to many people whom play with Lego like with their nephews or niece's or younger siblings and being able to help them with putting their Lego sets together with them.
I've played with Lego with my nephew and we had heaps of fun and he would laugh at the creations i would come up with and one time we had a Lego war which is where we didn't make things we just threw the pieces of Lego around the room which made us laugh but we had a hell of a time cleaning up, smiles.
Apparently, Lego uses a 3d-designing computer program to generate instructions. I'm currently talking to them, to see whether the program can be modified to turn graphical instructions into text-based ones using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. I'll post here with any updates!