
Like a lot of young children, Matthew Shifrin loved building Lego sets. But because he was blind, Shifrin had to rely on friends and family to help him complete his creations — sometimes bribing them with tea to get them to come by his house.
That all changed when he was 13. A family friend and babysitter came over to his house in Newton, Massachusetts and handed him a binder filled with accessible instructions for building a Middle Eastern palace. The instructions, written in braille, allowed him to complete the set without having to rely on the brightly colored pictures that typically come with Lego sets.