The Director General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission, John Asein, has decried the decline in the Braille literacy system among the visually impaired in Nigeria.
Asein called on the stakeholders to intensify efforts to encourage the visually impaired to embrace Braille.
The NCC DG spoke on Thursday in Lagos at a digital training programme to celebrate World Braille Day 2024, in memory of the founder of the Braille system, Louis Braille.
Braille is a system of touch reading and writing for blind people. In Braille raised dots represent the letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks, and allow symbols to show letter groupings.
“We are concerned that Braille literacy is going down. If we say the sighted are not reading, the blind are reading less Braille. This is because many people do not know how to read Braille. Now that they are caught up in the digital era, we have a challenge of whether to go with Braille or to remain with all the software-aided devices. But those who are experts in the process said Braille is also very important.
“Whatever we would do to encourage this, I think we should challenge every stakeholder to ensure that children are still able to read Braille,” Asein said.
The Chief Executive Officer, Accesstech Innovation, which organised the training, Mr Opeolu Akinola, said it was designed to help integrate the visually impaired into society through the adoption of technology to avail them equal opportunities as the sighted enjoy in society.
Akinola said, “We are marking Braille literacy, which is a system of writing and reading for the blind. We are also trying to make people understand that Braille has gone beyond paper. It is now digital.
“The way forward for blind people is to embrace this technology. We are promoting the use of Braille as a literary system and also encouraging people to use these digital devices so that they can easily access the information they need. So today alone, we are looking for the participation of 40 to 50 people.”
