In their speech at the World Blindness Summit, Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame and Martine Abel-Williamson will present a campaign that anyone interested in Braille should definitely keep an eye on now and especially next year!
Stay tuned, it’s worth it!
Especially because we can already present you with an important link here.
More Braille, More Empowerment
Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame
Moderator, Excellencies, Distinguished Hosts, Colleagues, Friends and Partners, on behalf of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairments, the CRPD Committee in Ghana,
it is my honor to greet you at this historical gathering where I am presenting on the theme, 200 years of Braille from slate to display.
Moderator, ladies and gentlemen, we come together not only as professionals, advocates and leaders, but as leaders of a global community committed to education and empowerment.
As you know and have said already, this year we celebrate 200 years of Braille, a system first tracked on a paper with a simple slate and stylus by Louis Braille, a 15-year-old student who refused to accept the limitations of its time.
And from that modest start has grown a legacy of literacy, dignity and independence. Today, you agree with me that Braille lives on our fingertips, on digital Braille displays, showing us that this title code is not of the past, it’s for the future.
So the campaign. Today is a milestone in that journey. Together with World Blind Union, ICEVI is proud to do a soft launch for the combined ICEVI WBU Global Braille Literacy Campaign.
The official launch will take place on World Braille Day, 4th of January, 2026. But here in Sao Paulo, we begin by sharing the vision and inviting your partnership. The campaign is called More Braille, More Empowerment.
Ladies and gentlemen, More Braille means confronting the reality where millions of children and adults are impacted by the severe global lack of access to public work in accessible formats.
We need more Braille text and information, more teachers of Braille, more Braille technology, more empowerment in rights as that. Braille is not only by reading and writing, but it is a pathway to independence, employment, leadership and full participation in society.
This campaign, ladies and gentlemen, is about turning our aspirations into action. Let’s see a bit about the campaign goals and focus.
Our campaign focuses on three areas of action, ladies and gentlemen, and these have been carefully chosen because they respond to the many needs of all Sao Paulo residents of ICEVI WBU.
So first, our aim is to raise awareness of the power of Braille and influence national policies that ensure access to learning and information in Braille.
The second advocacy is about changing perceptions so Braille is not seen as an optional but an essential.
Number two, information resources. We are compiling both new and existing resources to support the people who make Braille access a reality every day.
Educators including teachers, leaders and decision makers, parents and of course leaders themselves.
Imagine a global directory where a parent in Ghana, a teacher in Fiji, a policy maker in Mozambique can all find guidance, training materials and evidence in Braille as well as other accessible formats.
That is our ambition.
Third, research. Together with you, we want to generate innovation and strengthen the evidence base for Braille.
How does Braille literacy impact our academic success, employment and quality of life?
What technologies and teaching strategies are most effective?
Friends, evidence convenes governments and funders and it empowers communities like you and I to demand for our rights.
Together, these three pillars, advocacy, resources and Research, will create momentum for Braille literacy worldwide.
They are not abstract goals. They are practical steps to ensure that every learner has a chance to read and write Braille.
Call to partnership is my next point.
Listen friends, this is not only an ICEVI campaign, not only a WBU campaign, it is our campaign.
It is a movement of all of us to succeed.
In order for us to succeed, we need governments, schools, publishers, technology developers, parents and learners.
For us all to join hands. Indeed, we need every delegate here to see themselves as part of this journey.
So I humbly extend to you an invitation. Come with us. Share with your networks.
And most importantly, share your expertise, your energy and your passion.
As we mark 200 years of Braille, we must also look forward that This is not only how we honour the past, but what actions we take to shape the next 200 years ahead of us.
It is with that thought that I now turn to my colleague and friend, President of the World Blind Union, who will guide us in imagining that shared picture.
Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for your expertise.
Martine Abel-Williamson
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
My friend Getty has outlined our brand new Braille literacy campaign.
And we want all of you to be involved because we cannot do this without you.
We need your energy. We need your voices. And we need your ideas.
There are already many Braille initiatives out there. But how can we, in one year’s time, pull some initiatives together to have more access to Braille to people around the world?
We have the work of the World Braille Council. We have many Braille-related podcasts. And we have many web resources. But how can ICEVI and WBU create a movement of improved access over one year?
Outside the entrance of this hall, there is a booth, a stall. It is the Braille literacy campaign stall. There is a person there and there are resources.
You can sign up there to our mailing list because we will want all your organizations and your individual efforts to contribute to our campaign.
We will want you to add your logos to our website, WBU and ICEVI website. And we will contact each of the ICEVI seven regions and the WBU six regions so that you can provide direct input.
But more importantly, every individual is going to give you an email address that you can email your ideas and contributions as individual grassroots people.
That email address is braillecampaign@icevi.org.
You will, as an individual and organization, be able to contribute your great ideas and initiatives.
Our campaign for this year has got three broad working strands.
Those are information sharing of resources, because we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. We want to gather what you are already doing.
The second strand of work is advocacy videos. We can record during this conference or afterwards your own advocacy video where you testify what you use braille for and what people can use it for.
Nothing is as powerful as a personal story.
The third work strand is research. We want to gather research so that we can give those findings to the world.
But we also want to ask for your research ideas so that we can work with tertiary institutions and others to influence research in the area of braille.
So just repeating, for those three strands for you to become involved in, information and resource sharing, advocacy videos, your personal stories, and research.
Last but not least, braille has carried us for 200 years. Let’s ensure that we provide total access to braille to every possible learner. Obrigado. Thank you.
Links
useful links:
Read all articles on: livingbraille.eu
Contact us with your contributions, ideas and questions by: braille200@livingbraille.eu
Social media: Braille 200 on Facebook