About

The Labeler's Place

The 6dot Braille Labeler is targeted mainly towards adult Braille-literate people, many of whom would use Braille labels to differentiate between everyday objects in the home or office. In the United States alone, this includes approximately 50,000 people (although direct census data is unavailable and this figure is based on discussions with Braille organizations).

6dot User Testing

In addition to this figure, a less obvious target demographic for the 6dot Braille Labeler includes parents and teachers of blind children. In March of 2009, the 6dot was displayed at the annual California Transcribers and Educators for the Visually Handicapped conference (CTEVH, since re-named “California Transcribers and Educators for the Blind and Visually Impaired”) in San Francisco. There, the 6dot team had the chance to meet with many blind children, their parents, and their teachers, and received frequent praise on the 6dot’s potential as a teaching tool for children learning to read Braille. According to a 2007 report from the American Printing House for the Blind, there are approximately 5,600 Braille-literate children (up to age 21) in the United States. Parents and educators of these children could easily use a 6dot Braille Labeler to hone their literacy skills by labeling everyday items for identification by Braille.

As suggested by the parents and teachers at the CTEVH conference, the 6dot could have a significant impact on a child’s literary development. Teachers discussed their common practice of affixing Braille labels onto every item in a classroom to create a Braille-rich environment and facilitate learning. According to the teachers we spoke to, having a portable labeler at hand would make this process significantly easier. Parents, on the other hand, were impressed by how quickly their children took to playing with the 6dot prototype, making labels for themselves. Parents mentioned to us that keeping a labeler in the house would incite their children to practice Braille typing and reading skills. The 6dot Braille Labeler can therefore serve a dual purpose as a convenient labeling tool, and as a means of improving Braille literacy.