People everywhere love building LEGO sets. Unfortunately, blind people can’t follow the pictorial instructions that come with each set. However, by using the assistive technologies they already use every day, such as magnifiers and screen readers, people with visual impairments can use BFTB’s Text-based Building Instructions to guide them through the building process. Now people with vision challenges can enjoy the fun, creativity, and relaxation of building LEGO sets, and the thrill of doing it all on their own.

As miniature 3D replicas of real-life and imaginary things, LEGO sets help visually impaired people “see” wonders that are impossible to explore by touch, such as the towers of the London Tower Bridge or Hogwarts Castle. When a blind person builds these marvels with their own hands, they understand them in a new and enlightening way; there is an “aha” moment that they can’t get from just reading about them. Building LEGO sets helps blind people learn about the world while also having fun.

BFTB’s Text-based Building Instructions are created by sighted and blind people working together. Sighted people write the instructions and blind people test them to ensure they are clear. BFTB then posts the instructions on their website where visually impaired LEGO fans download them free of charge and use them to build marvelous creations.

BFTB has only one goal: to bring the joy of building LEGO sets to as many visually impaired people as possible. BFTB is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt not-for-profit organization.

Edbrowse is a combination editor, browser, and mail client that is 100% text based. The interface is similar to /bin/ed, though there are many more features, such as editing multiple files simultaneously, and rendering html. This program was originally written for blind users, but many sighted users have taken advantage of the unique scripting capabilities of this program, which can be found nowhere else. A batch job, or cron job, can access web pages on the internet, submit forms, and send email, with no human intervention whatsoever. edbrowse can also tap into databases through odbc. It was primarily written by Karl Dahlke.

The inspiration for this program came from Karl's many years of experience as a blind computer user.

Github: https://github.com/CMB/edbrowse/

A crowdsourcing service which lets lets people who are visually impaired call for visual assistance from their smartphones.