In Brazil, there are not many options for materials adapted for the education of blind children. The majority needs to be adapted by parents and teachers. In addition, these materials do not encourage the inclusion of these students. Schools are not prepared to tend to blind and non-blind students at the same time, which ends up creating a difference in teaching method during the activities in the classroom.

The Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind, whose work is aimed at inclusion, sought an innovative resource that would help toward this goal and improve life for both the visually impaired and those around them, in a real way.

Our objective was to increase the awareness about the idea using the Braille Bricks themselves as the campaign and then convince a major toy manufacturer to produce it in large scale to help in the literacy and inclusion of the visually impaired children.

We realized that classic 6-pin (3x2) building bricks have the same pattern as the braille alphabet. With a simply small modification to the pins, we could have 'the entire braille alphabet. All this without losing the characteristics of the toy. The building bricks are still building bricks. But now, with the peculiarity of being a letter, stimulating learning. This is how Braille Bricks came about. A toy for literacy and inclusion of blind children, since it allows them to play normally with other children, learning and teaching braille.

But that was just the beginning. We needed to convince the toy manufacturers

to embrace the idea and produce Braille Bricks on a large scale, so that it can help children around the world. So we launched a campaign with the hashtag #BrailleBricksForAll relying on the help from the whole of society to spread the word and cause interest among toy manufacturers.

Our campaign had a very specific audience: big toy manufacturers that could produce Braille Bricks on a large scale, benefiting the largest amount of visually impaired children as possible.

The problem was that the toy manufacturers, by and large, don’t have inclusive toys among their priorities. What proves that fact is that even though we opened the Braille Bricks’ patent on Creative Commons for any manufacturer to use it, no one actually did it.

Our strategy had to be different. An awareness campaign to first convince people of the importance of the cause and then count on their help to spread the message until it reached the manufacturers.

With strength in PR and social networks of influencers, we created a whole range of content to raise awareness of our cause – all hosted on the #BrailleBricksForAll hub on our homepage. From that point, the movement of the messages was organic.

We launched #BrailleBricksForAll with the film and a website.

We used influencers, internet personalities, bloggers, and strength in PR to spread the project around the planet.

Braille Bricks was presented to people with a large number of followers on the social networks, who promptly made themselves available to help in disseminating the project. Once that was done, the action started to grow organically in digital media, on its own, with people over the world sharing the idea.

One year and 141 million impressions later, we got the long-awaited e-mail: a message from Lego.

For almost two years, Dorina Nowill Foundation has worked to perfect the product along with the Danish Association of the Blind, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Leonard Cheshire, and the Blindeforbundet Norge.

In April 2019, the production of a LEGO Braille Bricks was officially announced during the Sustainable Brands Conference in Paris.

Dorina, which was a local foundation, became known worldwide.

With no media investment, the idea was completely disseminated over the social networks and press outlets.

The #BrailleBricksForAll achieved 141 million digital impacts, appeared in a nearly 15-minute story on a nationally TV show on Record TV in Brazil and even the White House talked about it. The impact of the reverberation on the digital platform was equal to an investment of US$ 160,000.

The LEGO Braille Bricks launch on April 2019 also has a great coverage having appeared everywhere, from CNN to BBC, from Forbes to The New York Times.

And the most important result: LEGO Foundation has already launched the product in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Brazil.

By 2020, another 16 countries will be added to this list, to help kids learn how to read and write, providing the inclusion of millions of visually impaired children.