Father invents toy to help his daughter learn Braille

Rebecca suffers from Usher Syndrome, a rare disease that affects hearing, balance and vision.

The family tried to learn sign language and adjust their lives to Rebecca, who will be completely blind by the time she reaches her teenage years. They went to look for toys for kids with visual impairments, but there were no valid options for the girl's situation.

"When a child is born with normal sight, they're immersed in language and they have little toys with letters and words, so what we decided to do was to make Rebecca her own toy", Jacob explained.

The father works as an engineer at a tech company and he decided to create a toy that would help teach words to Rebecca using Braille.

The invention - BecDot - consists of a 3D-printed rectangular box that introduces kids to braille words using small, colorful toys and letters. The toy works with an app that allows the user to program words to the gadget.

"If you put a cow on it, it 'moos' and she just loves it. When she puts a toy on it, the little dots pop up and it's to get her to identify what the toy is", the inventor said,

The engineer wants to make this device as low cost as possible and mass produce it so that it can be available for visually impaired children everywhere.

"There are a lot of blind children today… I'm making this for under a hundred dollars so it can get into children's hands who may not be able to afford it", he stated.

Jacob is still working on the project, but the BecDot already got an award at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (Not Impossible Limitless Award).

More info: https://memoriesforbecca.com/

Adapted from: http://bit.ly/2BSMABe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzbWyZv5cfc