Obtain Braille cards from the local society for the blind. They are instructional cards that list each letter in Braille. The student is then given a sentence in Braille to decipher. This activity can be offered to teachers as an optional item they might do with their class. Students were fascinated to see a copy of Harry Potter in Braille.
Sample script:
Pass out the braille cards and ask them if they know what they are.
This is called a Braille card, and it is used by those individuals who are sight impaired. Now I want you to close your eyes, and run your fingers over the dots. Now imagine that this is your language, and just the way there are different spoken languages, there are also unspoken languages, and this is the language of the sight impaired. To you, this might seems very difficult to learn and to understand because your world has been set up for someone with sight. But for someone who is sight impaired, this is not hard to learn because it is all that they know, and their sense of touch is so heightened that they become better able to cope through the world in the way of touch. Do you know of anybody like this?
Do you think that this person is not smart? No, he or she is just as smart as you, but she has to be taught in a different language. So I want you to think about this the next time you meet someone who is sight impaired. Think about whether or not you would want to make friends with this person, why or why not? You never know, he or she may become the best friend that you have ever had.
(A discussion may follow.)
I’d like to collect the cards now, please; I need to use them for the other classes.