If you have experience with braille, please consider taking and sharing the Global Braille Survey.
One part of the More Braille: More Empowerment campaign that I particularly want to highlight is the Global Braille Survey.
It is trying to build evidence about how braille is taught, learned, produced, accessed and used around the world.
As of 8 October 2026:
• 2,202 completed responses
• 96 countries and territories
• 16 languages
That sounds encouraging, but there is an important problem.
More than half of all responses have come from only five countries.
Around three in five responses have been completed in English.
Parents and caregivers account for fewer than one in twenty responses.
So having thousands of responses does not automatically make something globally representative.
I particularly hope more people from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other less represented regions and language communities will participate.
The survey has four versions for:
• Blind, low vision and deafblind adults aged 18+
• Parents and guardians of blind, low vision and deafblind children
• Teachers and other professionals involved in braille education
• Braille transcribers
You do not need to be an expert braille reader.
Even if you were never given the opportunity to learn braille, that experience is relevant too.
Take the survey here:
tiny.cc/braillesurvey
It remains open until 31 December 2026.
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I also want to add an important qualification.
This survey will not magically solve the braille-access problems we face globally.
Some people contacted me after I previously shared it and rightly pointed out that many braille readers who should be represented in research like this may never encounter an online survey at all.
Many people are not technologically confident.
Some may have limited internet access.
Some may not belong to online blindness communities.
And although the survey is available in a growing number of languages, it is still unavailable in many local languages.
This creates a real risk: the people easiest to reach digitally can become the people whose experiences define what we think the global braille situation looks like.
So, if you have ability, influence, organisational capacity or simply access that somebody else does not have, I would encourage you to go further than just sharing the link.
- Help translate it.
Work with your organisation or community to help make the survey available in languages that are currently missing. You can contact ICEVI at:
info@icevi.org
- Help somebody complete it.
Reach beyond WhatsApp groups, mailing lists, Mastodon, Facebook and other online spaces.
Talk to braille readers in your local community.
Talk to older braille users.
Talk to parents.
Talk to teachers and transcribers.
And where appropriate, help somebody access and complete the survey rather than assuming that sharing a link means they can participate independently.
ICEVI and WBU also say that alternative arrangements can be made for people who have difficulty completing the survey online.
Contact:
info@icevi.org
info@wbu.ngo
Responses are anonymous, IP addresses are not collected, and almost every question is optional.
The survey has also received human-research ethics approval from the University of Kansas.
Representation does not happen simply because participation is technically open to everyone. Sometimes we have to actively bring people into the conversation.
Please take the survey, but more importantly, help make sure that people beyond our usual online circles can take part too.
#GlobalBrailleSurvey #MoreBrailleMoreEmpowerment #Braille #BrailleLiteracy #Accessibility #Blindness #DisabilityResearch