From the moment parents find out they’re pregnant, everything becomes about the baby’s health. Then, suddenly, it’s milestones. First words, first steps, first day of school. Everybody is obsessed with getting it right.
Education shows up early. Toys have letters. Songs teach the alphabet. Charts go up on walls. Children are surrounded by print before they even know what reading is. My cousin even had one of those height charts with letters. Fun, right? He loved it. I had one too.
I couldn’t see it. Not a single letter. Not a single shape.
Letters weren’t mine. They belonged to everyone else. Spoken aloud, described, explained, but never mine. I could recite the alphabet perfectly. I could sing it in songs. I could repeat it on command. I just couldn’t touch it. I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t know what a letter felt like.
So, I did what any self-respecting blind child would do. I listened. I memorised. I repeated. I became the queen of auditory mimicry. I could hear a word once and never forget it. Handy? Sure. Fulfilling? Not really.
Then came Braille. Oh, Braille. Before I could read it, I was using things like bottle caps and peas to make the letters. The first time I ran my fingers over those little dots, I swear I felt like I’d found a secret treasure chest. Words waited for me. They didn’t disappear the second someone spoke them. I could go back. I could explore. I could mess up and try again without anyone knowing. Finally, letters were mine. Books were mine. Now I could read them myself rather than listening to them on cassette tapes or CDs.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a good audiobook, dramatised or otherwise, but Braille didn’t just teach me to read. It gave me a way to hold language in my hands, to play with it like it owed me something. I could pause, linger, even argue with a word if I wanted. Learning became mine. Literacy became mine, not something borrowed. And let me tell you, that’s addictive.
I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Braille had been there from the very start. If my alphabet chart had raised dots instead of flat pictures. If letters had been something I could touch, explore, and call my own from day one. I would have known language differently, not just in sound, but in shape, in space, in touch.
People sometimes say, “But screen readers are faster. Braille is old-fashioned.”
Fast? Sure. Convenient? Definitely. Computers mean you don’t have to worry about where you’re going to store these bulky books. But fast doesn’t teach you to own a word. Fast doesn’t let you pause on a letter and feel its shape under your fingers. Fast doesn’t make you feel like language is yours. Braille does that. And honestly? There’s a quiet smug satisfaction in proving that with things like refreshable Braille displays, it still matters. Now, you can have the best of both worlds. Braille at your fingertips, and a paperless environment.
Print saturates the world in ways most people never notice. It’s on signs, packaging, walls, toys. Sighted children learn that language belongs to them just by moving through space. Blind children are excluded from that passive access. Braille isn’t extra; it’s how we enter a world that wasn’t built with us in mind.
Braille is quiet power. Not flashy. Not loud. But it grows with you. It sits in your hands and waits. It gives you independence, confidence, a little rebellion against a world that keeps assuming you can’t. It tells a blind child: You belong here. You can do this. This is yours.
And that’s not just a nice thought. That’s survival. That’s ownership. That’s claiming your space in a world that’s too quick to hand you someone else’s version of knowledge. Braille doesn’t just teach letters. It teaches: I exist. I matter. I can take this world and make it mine.
So yes. Braille is power. And if you think it’s old-fashioned, let me remind you: the power of being able to touch a word, hold it, and know it’s yours? That never goes out of style.
This column is supplied in conjunction with the T&T Blind Welfare Association
Headquarters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad
Email: ttbwa1914@gmail.com
Phone: (868) 624-4675
WhatsApp: (868) 395-3086
