How a blind man made it possible for others with low vision to build Lego sets

NEWTON, Mass. (AP) — Like many young children, Matthew Shifrin loved building Lego sets. However, because he was blind, Shifrin had to rely on friends and family to complete his works; Sometimes he would bribe them with tea to get them to come to his house.

Everything changed when he was 13 years old. A family friend and babysitter came to his home in Newton, Massachusetts, and handed him a binder full of accessible instructions for building a Middle Eastern palace. Instructions written in Braille allowed him to complete the set without having to rely on the brightly colored pictures that usually come with it. lego sets.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to build a Lego set on my own,” Shifrin said at home, surrounded by sets he’s built, including a Statue of Liberty statuette and NASA’s Apollo Saturn V rocket. “It was truly an incredible experience because I was in complete control of the entire construction process. I knew where the pieces were going and I was able to learn about the world around me.”

After Shifrin’s caregiver died, he wanted to honor her memory. So he began tweaking the instructions the duo posted online to reach other blind builders.

Three years ago, Shifrin launched Bricks for the Blind. The 28-year-old actor currently works with a team of 30 experienced writers and blind testers. The website makes downloadable instructions available free of charge to anyone who is blind or visually impaired. They can print step-by-step instructions in braille, use braille computers, or turn to screen readers, which are software applications that convert text to speech.

The instructions allow a blind person to build on their own, but Shifrin’s website says a sighted person may also be needed for sorting lego bricks. Otherwise, the blind builder may turn to one of several applications that identify bricks using artificial intelligence.

So far, the nonprofit has created instructions for more than 540 Lego sets, from a 100-piece car to a 4,000-piece bridge. Nearly 3,000 builders in the United States and as far away as Australia have used his instructions.

Shifrin also approached Denmark-based Lego Group in 2017 to make its products more accessible, which inspired the company to create voice and braille instructions for a growing number of Lego sets. This started in 2019.

The company also introduced Lego Braille Bricks in 2020, which are available in French, English and Spanish and feature studs on the bricks that correspond to letters, numbers and symbols. He also included several characters with vision loss in his sets.

Shifrin, who is also an actor, composer and opera singer, said that he has received messages from many people who have not been able to build Lego until now.

He heard from blind grandparents saying they could now build with their grandchildren. “We couldn’t build it together with our children. They didn’t ask for our help, but now we can teach our grandchildren about Lego,” Shifrin said. “Or blind parents who say, ‘My kids can see, they don’t want my help, but it’s great to really understand what all the hype about Lego is about because now I can build it on my own.’

Daniel Millan, who lost his sight in 2024, applied to Bricks for the Blind after the tumor on his optic nerves was crushed. The 31-year-old graduate student from San Diego, who is studying to become an assisted technology instructor, first completed a Lego ornament set. Later, on his anniversary, he completed a Lego rose set with his wife.

“Being able to do this independently is freedom,” he said, adding that his sudden vision loss left him wondering what he would never be able to do again.

But after building Lego sets, he soon learned: “It’s no longer about what I can’t do. It’s more about what I can do,” he said.

For Natalie Charbonneau, who is blind, the instructions allowed her to complete sets without relying on her sighted husband. It also allowed him to have fun with his 5-year-old son and build many fire trucks and other vehicles.

“If he has questions, I have the ability to check in or follow up on his work instead of saying, ‘You should wait for your dad’ or ‘You should ask your dad.’ That’s something I can do with him now, too, and that empowers me,” she said. Bricks for the Blind tester Charbonneau is a doctoral student living in Bellingham, Washington.

Teri Turgeon, education director of community programs at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass., where Shifrin attended as a baby, said accessible instruction allows blind children to experience the same pleasure as their sighted peers. It also helps them visualize the wider world and develop “fine motor and tactile skills.”

“He created a space for innovation and accessibility that didn’t exist before, and he did it with a toy that kids play with every day,” he said.

Back home, Shifrin helped blind builder Minh Ha build a go-kart. Ha took Lego bricks and pieces from two bowls and started building a driver figurine first.

“It’s just legs, torso, head and helmet. You’ve done this before. It’s child’s play. I believe you,” Shifrin told him.

“Great,” he said, smiling. “Okay, I’ll put the helmet on the head. And then… I’ll put the legs on the body.”

He thought about his journey, which started two years ago when he made a lotus flower.

“A lot of blind people have been excluded from the cultural and sort of childhood phenomenon of building Lego and playing with Lego,” Ha said. “There is something incredibly satisfying and also comforting about being able to put together these very complex, very beautiful and architecturally complex structures.”