Distance Education Resources

The National Federation of the Blind is committed to ensuring quality education for blind students, and to providing activities and lessons that are fun and educational for blind children and their families. When virtual education is necessary or encouraged, we want blind students to be able to continue learning alongside their sighted peers. 

BEE Activities

In this section, we feature select activities from the BEE, our e-newsletter that outlines strategies and hands-on activities for parents and children to perform together to foster Braille skills, as well as early movement and travel. Visit our BEE archive for more fun and learning.

Learning Gestures

  • Education Goal: Learn common gestures.
  • How to Play
    • Some blind children can struggle with learning gestures that sighted people tend to learn quickly. For example, waving hello and goodbye. Blind children want to wave like everyone else. Learning gestures is an important skill to master, especially at an early age. To help with this, demonstrate to your children gestures such as waving, thumbs up, and "ok." Gestures are an important part of the visual world that are sometimes ignored for blind children, but they don't have to be.

Braille Is Sweet

  • Education Goal: Practice Braille.
  • How to Play
    • Let's forget about that silly rule about not playing with your food. Instead, make it into a learning moment. How, you ask? It’s easy! Marshmallows make wonderful Braille dots! First, lick one end of the marshmallow to get it nice and sticky. Then press it onto a piece of construction paper. You can spell all sorts of fun marshmallow messages and strengthen your child's Braille skills at the same time. 

Interactive Lessons

Enjoy these interactive lessons that we conducted via Zoom. 

Braille Story Time

We want blind children to have the opportunity to see fluid Braille readers in action. Here are some videos of blind people reading stories in Braille. Each story has an activity that you and your child can do to take the learning to the next level.

How-To Activities

Here are some resources to help engage your children in activities around the house and teach nonvisual concepts.

Additional Resources