How braille changed my life and how I help others to recognise its importance

Dave Williams, Inclusive Design Ambassador at RNIB, has leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare genetic eye condition which causes blindness from birth. Dave, and the rest of RNIB’s Inclusive Design team, work to ensure that organisations are delivering inclusive and accessible experiences that make a difference for blind and partially sighted people. Whether it’s facilitating awareness training for organisations, testing, and advising on the design of accessible technology, or representing RNIB at industry conferences, Dave is committed to making sure that accessibility and inclusion is prioritised within society.

Dave is a passionate advocate on the power of braille to help people with sight loss live independently and believes that everyone can benefit from tactile experiences. He lives with his wife who is also blind, and their sighted son.

“Regardless of being blind or partially sighted, we all benefit from tactile experiences, and feel a bit more certainty when a button has a little nub, when you turn a key in the lock and feel it click, when you can feel the warmth from your coffee cup. It’s a core part of the human experience. It's the first sense we have when we develop, and probably the last sense we experience, so braille is just an optimisation of that.

When you read with your fingers, you use the same part of the brain that turns the written word into meaning. People often ask how I remember all the different patterns, but it's the same as print. Braille is a code for reading with your fingers, in the way that print is a way of reading with your eyes.

The importance of braille

My goal is to capture people's imagination in terms of the value of braille. There are a lot of people who think braille is outdated and too complicated, but braille is still highly relevant, and there’s lots of it in the world if you know where to look.

We had a blind home secretary who could not have done his job without braille. There are blind teachers, lawyers, accountants, who rely on braille to do their jobs. Stevie Wonder presented a Grammy to Ed Sheeran using braille. Braille software is part of most new Apple, Android and Windows devices, and on every medication package. It's also included on Co-op own brand products, and you'll find it in many lifts.

Celebrating the big moments in life with braille

My wife and I have always loved playing Scrabble, and I even proposed to her on the braille Scrabble board. The tiles have braille letters, and they sit on a board which has little barriers between the squares to keep them in place. On Valentine's Day, 2011, I suggested playing a game, as my wife’s always in the mood for Scrabble. She read the board with my words ‘Will you marry me?’ and started looking for the right letters. Which is when I remembered that in a standard set of Scrabble, there are only two letter Y’s, and I had used both. So eventually she put ‘Blank, E, S’ onto the board. And I said, ‘I'll take that, that sounds like a yes to me’.

Braille marked another big life moment for me when I crossed the finish line at the London Marathon. After running the New York City

Marathon, the success inspired me to run the London Marathon. I was involved in a campaign to get more recognition for guide runners at big races, and eventually, in 2019, as a result of this campaign, the London Marathon changed their policy. I was so excited about this because I saw us affecting real change.

As I came over the finish line, a volunteer placed the medal around my neck, and I felt a sense of completion and satisfaction. I touched the medal and realised, that for the very first time, there was braille on the London Marathon medal, that read ‘We run together’. It was such a personal moment and a vindication of everything - the campaigning, the running journey, the efforts I'd gone to promote braille literacy. If someone had read those words to me, it wouldn’t have been the same -it's my being able to read that for myself and have that moment of realisation on my own. It’s amazing what you can do when you've got enough time, determination, and people encouraging you.”