by Aasha Rose and Jodie Lea Martire
Author details
Aasha Rose is a braille teacher and PhD candidate whose research focuses on braille literacy and its relationship to life outcomes.
Jodie Lea Martire is a writer, editor, translator, and PhD candidate researching publishing in minority languages (including braille as a minority writing system).
As sighted researchers, Jodie and Aasha have undertaken extensive research in partnership with braille readers and writers across Australia. One fundamental question remains unanswered: How many braillists are there in Australia? Aasha and Jodie see themselves as allies of the braille-reading community: we share these thoughts as a way of sharing our knowledge and hopefully strengthening the community’s capacity for self-advocacy.
How many braillists are there in Australia?
As researchers, one of the first things we do to learn about a research topic is look for statistics. In this case, statistics about braille readers in Australia. We both found, heartbreakingly, that there are no statistics to be had: not from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, not from education departments, not from braille or blindness organisations. (Even the stats for Australians with blindness and low vision are notoriously wobbly!) The latest informed estimate Jodie could find was from Beverley Johnson’s 1986 study, Braille Reading Trends in Australia: A Report Prepared for the National Library of Australia. Johnson estimated there were 250 braille-reading students and around 830 adults at that time.
One way to estimate how many braille readers there are, is via the borrower numbers from Australia’s three braille libraries (Vision Australia, VisAbility and Braille House). From Jodie’s research, Vision Australia has around 600 braille patrons; VisAbility knows of around 70 braille readers in Western Australia; and Braille House delivers its original quarterly magazines to 85 adult and 27 child borrowers. There will be overlaps in these figures as borrowers can belong to more than one library, but they indicate Australia has more than 700 braille readers at the moment. (This is from an article co-authored with Amanda Acutt, coming out later in 2026. Jodie will be sharing it with BCA.)
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
The lie here is that there are no statistics. We know that service organisations have statistics of the braille users they work with, and education departments need to know how many Teachers of Vision Impaired (TVIs) are teaching braille to how many students. Privacy and confidentiality concerns would make these figures difficult to share, but it shouldn’t be impossible when it comes to providing support for a minority (braille readers) within a minority (blind and vision impaired people) within a minority (disabled people).
The damned lie is this cliché: “If you don’t measure it, it doesn’t matter”. None of us want that to be true for braille!
And as for the statistics – well, why do they matter? Good statistics could tell us more than just how many braille readers there are. They could define who is reading contracted or uncontracted braille, and thus what kind of braille should be provided in government documents and braille libraries. They could indicate if people use braille to read the floors in lifts, label jars, read a novel or analyse computer code – and thus the braille levels which education needs to teach. They could tell us if there were geographical differences (between numbers of readers and their braille levels) in Queensland and South Australian schools, for example – which could tell us about the requirements for different teaching practices, teacher training levels and resource provision.
Reliable, credible figures would offer vital information to braille advocates. The information could be verified, data collection could be repeated regularly so it is possible to compare against historical benchmarks, and a shared baseline could create the foundation for research-based, systematic advocacy work.
Good statistics would tell us more about what our braille education system looks like – and what the blindness community wants it to look like. Knowing how many students would benefit from learning braille could guide teacher recruitment and training, curriculum planning, resource development and distribution, technological infrastructure, and research-informed decisions (e.g., where in NSW do embossers need to be provided and maintained?).
At a societal level, we would know what braille services were present, missing, wanted – in terms of braille signage, or braille training and support services for those who lose their vision later in life, or creating employment pathways for blind and low-vision braille transcribers and proofers to make the braille materials that the broader community needs.
We cannot overstate how fundamental it is to have good statistics. Statistics are a way of seeing reality in detail, and the reality of braille is not something that is being looked at closely enough. We believe that collecting statistics on Australia’s braille readers is a key step to undertaking meaningful advocacy to improve access to and availability of braille, and we were so pleased to hear it spoken of at the BCA Inform session in March this year.
Missed opportunities
The Disability Royal Commission (DRC), established in 2019, was informed by thousands of submissions and testimonies from people with disabilities, families, and professionals. The Commission heard that students with disability do not always receive the adjustments they require, that individualised support is lacking, curricula can be inflexible and inaccessible, and teacher capacity is frequently insufficient. The Commission made 15 recommendations aimed at building a more inclusive education system. And yet, for those of us who work with, research, and advocate alongside braillists, something was missing. The DRC made specific recommendations for D/deaf children including specialist professional development for educators, the employment of lead practitioners, and the provision of skilled and qualified Auslan interpreters. Neither blindness nor braille was specifically mentioned. We suggest that this reflects a deep structural issue: Deaf communities and Auslan users are counted, tracked and documented in ways that braillists are not. The number of Auslan users in schools is known; interpreter demand can be forecast; workplace shortages can be modelled. Braillists, by contrast, remain statistically invisible. What continues to trouble us, however, is not the Commission’s silence on braille, but the sector’s response to it.
While BCA and other blindness organisations examined and welcomed the Government’s response to the DRC, the absence of specific recommendations passed largely without challenge. This represents a profound missed opportunity for blindness organisations and braille advocacy groups to ensure that clear, actionable, braille-specific recommendations were included. By failing to seize the moment, we allowed a dangerous old misconception to persist: braille is niche, outdated, or relevant only to a handful of students.
What the DRC revealed, perhaps unintentionally, is not a failure of education systems, but a fragmentation within blindness advocacy itself. This lack of visibility at a policy level has flow-on effects well known to braillists: lack of support, advocacy, representation and access. Looking beyond Australia makes this gap even more apparent. The Braillists Foundation, established in the United Kingdom in 2020, was formed by braillists, for braillists and with braillists. Its mission is simply, “More braille!” Under braillists’ leadership, the foundation exemplifies solidarity rather than charity. It fosters community-led advocacy and resource development, empowering the braille community through representation, expertise and shared ownership.
Drawing on our research and ongoing conversations with braillists across education, employment and community settings, we believe the next phase of advocacy can deliberately build the visibility of braille across the life course of braille users. Capturing braille use in data ensures it is planned for, resourced and protected. Braille support can then be expected and coherently delivered throughout education and support systems.
We propose these three advocacy priorities as an initial step.
- Data is collected through the AEDC in a child’s first year of formal schooling and is an opportunity for early intervention. If braille use or the need for tactile literacy were recognised early, families and educators could better plan braille instruction before literacy gaps emerge.
- Data currently collected through the NCCD each year does not explicitly capture braille use. We argue that braille can be documented in this existing data collection process. This would support resourcing, equipment and curriculum implications throughout a child’s schooling.
- Educational data alone is not enough: braille data must be gathered for the whole Australian population. Including even a small number of questions in the National Census would represent a significant shift. These might be: “What reading and writing system do you primarily use?” “What is your preferred medium for important information?” (braille, audio, large print, digital text, other). “If you use braille, do you primarily use contracted or uncontracted braille?”
Such questions would not only acknowledge braillists’ existence but would also generate long-overdue evidence about how, where and by whom braille is used. All these statistics matter for planning, communication, employment support, public information, and technology development.
Thoughts for the braille community
We know that valuable work on maintaining braille and providing braille resources is being done by existing organisations: the Australian Braille Authority (ABA), the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities, TVI organisations SPEVI and ICEVI, and the three braille libraries mentioned earlier. We have connected with these organisations in different ways on our research paths. But even after 2 or 3 years on our separate projects, we only know some of what’s happening in braille circles in Australia. We would love to learn more about:
- Who is consulting braille readers as a group, regardless of the service organisations they may be connected to? This would be important for establishing braille readers as an independent community, a constituency, a group with shared needs, concerns and perhaps opinions that could be presented in advocacy work. This could help improve sector-wide responses to braillists’ tech needs, reading options and circumstances as a specialist reading community.
- Are braillists’ voices and experiences being gathered, both widely and regularly? This could strengthen the community of braille readers, as well as provide consistent information and updates on how easy and accessible it is for readers to access braille tech and texts. This ongoing data collection is invaluable for advocacy work (and researchers, of course!) to know what has or hasn’t improved over time, and to help guide the most important needs for braille advocates to address next.
- Are occasions being made to bring braille users together? We know that BCA has just launched its Braille Enthusiasts Peer Group (yay!) but are other opportunities also available? Could time be made at the next Round Table conference or BCA Convention to bring braille readers together in person?
- How are braillists’ experiences being used to direct advocacy? Who is collecting their stories, noticing the common threads, identifying areas where lobbying could bring the most beneficial changes to this specialist group?
- Who is advocating for supporting and strengthening braille as an essential reading and writing system in Australia? Our research has told us that braille is of fundamental importance for braille readers. Is this the role of BCA, the ABA, the Round Table, etc., or a combination of existing bodies?
- Who is representing braille readers in explaining and justifying the vital importance and lifelong value of braille to the NDIS and the education sector (federal and state)? We’ve all heard the anecdotes of NDIS case workers, schools and teaching assistants not understanding the life-changing importance of access to braille education and materials. We also understand that the best people to speak for blind and low-vision people are representatives from the community itself. We can imagine how powerful it would be to have “own voices” advocates from the blindness community expressing the importance of braille to major service and education organisations. These spokespeople could be lived-experience advocates for how crucial braille is for education, independence and autonomy, perhaps using the extra information gathered from their community (as suggested above). We could see them delivering workshops or presentations to high-level managers of the NDIS or Education Departments, urging them to authorise and support access to braille throughout their organisations (and avoid those terrible stories that we all know about). Would this be a suitable task for BCA and/or the ABA?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this article, and to seeing how BCA and its committed members can strengthen the situation for braille readers of all ages. Please contact us if we can help: Aasha Rose (aasha.rose@adelaide.edu.au) and Jodie Martire (j.martire@student.uq.edu.au).