Global Kids Siam is a small organization I founded that makes use of new innovations such as 3D printing and laser cutting technology to provide education. After hosting Global Kids Day 2023, where we taught kids to design kites and have their names laser cut and pasted onto the kites, as well as providing educational material to rural Thai children with BTR, the value of student education became even more apparent to me.
As a result, I wanted to do something that could improve education for a different group of students. An idea came to me after volunteering at the Educational Technology Center for the Blind. I realized there were gaps in learning opportunities between sighted and visually impaired students, and decided to recycle plastic bottles into 3D printing filament to produce resources that aid the visually impaired.
Through working with the Center for the Blind, I was able to experiment with the design of the educational product I wanted to make, and ended up with something called “Alphabraille.” It is a domino-adjacent object that includes braille letters and the corresponding English alphabet on a rectangular block. This allows visually impaired students to feel and learn the English alphabet, helping to bridge the gap with their sighted peers.
Interacting with visually impaired students also taught me a lot about braille. I learned that braille had to be of a standardized size and spacing, which led me to make many adjustments to the design to ensure it would be most effective. After providing them with a final batch, the center director thanked me, and we have been working together since then.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to present my work to Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Thailand. It felt surreal to have the Princess take a look at the work I have been doing with the visually impaired. It was rewarding to see that my product was well received by the public and may be used to help visually impaired students with their learning while also bridging the gap between them and their sighted peers.