What is your favourite toy? Regardless of whether you’re an adult or a kid, playing with the Lego building brick set is one of the most fun things to do. But, little Matthew Shifrin was not in a position to play with Lego as he has a severe sight disability. He couldn’t enjoy playing with Lego like the other kids of his age.
He received a birthday gift from one of his close family friends and then he realized that he could make the impossible, possible! He was so excited about making a difference and took action! He caught the attention of the whole world and it made the top Lego companies motivated. So with that said, let’s dig into how he changed the whole industry.
An Early Birth
Matthew Shifrin was born in the late ’90s. “Matt” was a sweet baby boy. His mother had to go into labour earlier than they expected, yet he appeared healthy even though he was a premature baby.
Nonetheless, there’s a tendency of premature babies showing some disabilities after the birth itself. It was the same with matt as well. He lost his sight soon after he was born. He became blind for the rest of his life. Yet, being visually impaired didn’t stop Matt from seeing things.
How It All Started?
A parent is supposed to be prepared to face whatever the challenge that his/her child had to go through, but, if you’re blind from birth, you learn to accustom to the world and then to live on your own.
It happens naturally and there’s no need of having an adjustment period for that. Lilya Finkel, Matt’s babysitter, a very good friend of the family wanted to surprise him with a set of Lego building bricks when he was 5-year-old. He was very excited about it but seemed like he had been through some hardships.
“I Had Absolutely No Way of Building Any of These Sets on My Own”
When he was a kid, he had friends and he could play with them. Yet, still, there were certain times when he had to sit back alone as he was not able to play some games, especially building things with Lego.
“I went into elementary school and a lot of my friends were very big Lego fans. But the issue was that I had absolutely no way of building any of these sets on my own simply because the instructions are graphical,” Matt revealed to the Washington Post.
The Greatest Part of Lego
What is so great about building blocks and Lego pieces? Well, anyone can play it irrespective of their age, right? You don’t have to read the instruction manual and to try understanding them.
You just can look at the box and make whatever you want or at the same time, you can just look at the graphically oriented manual. Children love this, but it was a great disadvantage for Matt.
Trying Things a Different Way
Sometimes you don’t know how much something means to you until you no longer have it with you or is being removed from your life. Infants and toddlers often communicate through sight sense as they can’t communicate through words yet.
So it means that Matt had lost a great part of communicating as he has no sight sense. So, does it mean that it is impossible to have these experiences? No, right? It means that he had to figure out a different way of doing it. Gratefully, Matt had some amazing people who were willing to help him to go through this challenge.
Playing with his Parents
Matt’s parents were amazing and they were there for Matt for everything he needed. They played with Matt especially when it came to Legos. He needed help as he couldn’t read or see the instructions.
“I couldn’t see the instructions and so I’d have my mom or my dad build with me,” Matt shared with The Today Show. The more he played with Legos, the more he likes the games. It seemed like it was not just a toy for him.
Using Lego as a Learning Tool
When he grew up, Matt used his Lego set as a learning tool, so that he could encounter the world in his own unique and specific manner. Matt was only playing Lego with his parents still, with their help.
“I loved the creativity of Lego… it was wonderful brain training for me: Blind people have trouble with spatial reason and spatial awareness, and Lego lets you go piece by piece to put a room together,” Matt shared with the Washington Post.
How Matt Utilized Lego as a Learning Tool
There are countless benefits of crafting and construction and there’s no age limit to get these benefits. Some of them include enhancing creative skills and working with persistence and patience. And when it came to Matt, he was encouraged to find out how would it help him to see things as his friends did.
“What Lego sets are able to do is that they’re able to really help you understand the world around… Let’s say, and a double-decker bus passes you by, someone says ‘Oh, there was a tour bus that passed by us.’ You can say ‘I know what that looks like, I built it a couple of weeks ago’. And that’s very important to blind children,” Matt proclaimed to the Washington Post.
“I Knew I Would Not Be Able to Build Real Lego Sets By Myself”
Matt was unable to play with the Lego sets alone, without his parents. Above all, it was not the most appropriate way of doing it. He thought that he was not in a position to build a Lego sets all by himself until he was 13 and his old babysitter had a surprise for him.
Matt shared on his official website, “When my dad had free time, we’d sit down and build together. Dad would tell me which piece we needed, and I’d search until I found it. Then he would tell me where it was supposed to go. Little by little a structure would take shape. It was a fun process, but it was incredibly time-consuming. I knew I would not be able to build real LEGO sets by myself.”
Feeling Left Out
There are some instances where we all want to be independent without being dependant and to do things on our own without getting anyone’s help. Although Matt had a way to enjoy building blocks as his friends did, he felt more left out when he was getting older.
“In elementary school, I would have friends that would be like ‘Hey! I just finished the spaceship.’ And I would be like ‘That’s so cool, how did you do it?’ and they said, ‘Uh, we don’t know. We looked at the instructions’,” Matt revealed to The Today Show.
A Box of Building Bricks
All of Matt’s friends were able to build the set all alone without their parents’ help and it was an impossible task for Matt to do it all alone. Lilya, the close family friend was feeling bad about Matt as he was suffering over something which was not his fault.
When Matt was 13-years-old Lilya surprised him with another set of Lego. But there was a specialty in this set. She had added something new that he could enjoy building things more than he ever did with his parents.
Lilya’s Surprisebuild
Lego packages came with an image-based guide to help to build the Lego sets. Yet, Matt can’t see, right? But Lilya had made something that Matt could be used as a guideline. She made a personal guide for Matt spending many hours out of love and patience.
It was a binder and there was a set of instructions to Lego’s battle of the Almu castle (a Middle Eastern domed castle) in Braille all customized just for Matt. “[Lilya] thought that I, as a blind person, should be able to do everything that sighted kids can do. And so, she made the first set of text-based instructions,” Matt explained to Today. But she did more!
The Manual Was all Hand-Typed
“The text-based instructions began when Lilya, a family friend of mine, gave me this big box and this big fat binder. In this big cardboard box was an 821 piece castle. And in the binder were text-based instructions that she brailed on braille typewrite by hand,” Matt further clarified to the Washington Post.
Lilya was more far-sighted and she made advancements in order to make sure that this Lego set was big enough, a set that would be efficient enough for a 13-year-old boy to build alone without getting any help.
“You’ve Built It!”
Matt literally had no words to express how grateful he was and how much it meant to him. “When you’re able to build something out of a Lego set, then you as a blind child are able to understand it completely. You’ve built it!” Matt shared with Today.
He slowly began to get rid of feeling left out ad rather he felt more accomplished. Moreover, it was quite unbelievable that a toy would contribute to teaching the visually impaired people to feel the world. Matt felt like he was living in a new world and he wanted to share it with others.
A System that Opened Up the World
So after 13 years, for the first time, Matt was able to build a Lego a set on is own. It was all because of Lilya’s touching and inventive idea. Yet, it was just the beginning. The hand-typed instruction manual for the 800+ Lego set was not the end!
Lilya was able to emerge an organization system in order to help Matt understand what pieces he should use in each step. “She named every single LEGO piece that was being used in the set, and that really opened up the world to me,” Matt shared with Today.
Feeling Accomplished
There are certain things that a child can accomplish alone all by himself like riding a bike without side wheels for the first time and getting selected for college. All these incidents are emotional and touching things.
It was the same with Matt. When he was able to build the Lego set all alone using his Braille, he was so motivated. Matt further expressed to Today, “It’s amazing to have that feeling [that you’ve built something on your own]. I’ve never had that feeling before.” Other than feeling accomplished, Matt was able to one more thing from Lilya’s gift.
Over 20 More to Come
Matt’s Braille instruction manual was the first of many other manuals yet to come. Lilya and Matt together worked on many other manuals and it made Matte play and learn more. The more manuals they created, the more Matt got experiences.
“Over time, Lily realized that she could just type the instructions on the computer and e-mail them to me, and my screen-reader took care of the rest, so there was no need to braille anything… we transcribed over 20 Lego sets, and continued to work on more,” Matt wrote on his official website.
A Challenging Task
Even though it seems pretty easy to transcribe these manuals in Braille, It was quite hard. In fact, transcribing a visual thing to someone has no sight in a way that he/could understand was not an easy task to do.
“There were difficulties; sometimes Lilya made a mistake; sometimes I misunderstood the instructions,” Matt wrote on his website. They had to go through accuracy issues and it took a long time. Sometimes, some manuals had over 800 pages. Yet, Matt and Lilya were so motivated and worked hard.
Worth the Effort
It was obvious that creating manuals was challenging and time-consuming. Lilya and Matt did it whenever they had free time during the weekends and holidays. They worked hard to create the manuals.
Lilya typed the instructions while Matt tested them out. It took a month and so to complete one manual. But the success of their work was literally worth the time and effort they put in, yet they had no idea how much was it.
Sharing with the World
When Matt was becoming older, he and Lilya had a collection of braille manuals for all the sets that Matt loved, which were obviously written by them. Matt realized that he shouldn’t keep all these for himself and that he should share these with other visually impaired kids as well.
“I realized that I really couldn’t keep these instructions to myself and that blind children deserve to learn using Lego and to really engage with the world around them using LEGO sets. So, then I built legoforhteblind.com. “Onto that website, we put all of the text-based instructions that we made,” Matt revealed to the Washington Post.
A Two-Person Operation
Lilya and Matt didn’t have a clear idea about what they should do next. They realized that the Internet was the best method to share these manuals with other people who were in the same position as Matt was once. They didn’t know whether it would be successful or not.
Matt confessed to The Washington Post that “as soon as the ‘legofortheblind’ website went up, we got hundreds of emails saying ‘This is so great, can you make this set accessible and that set accessible?’ The trouble was we had to turn these people down because it was just me and her – a two-person operation.”
Keeping Up with the High Demand
While this task began as an approach to assist Matt with achieving the unthinkable, it immediately progressed into a beginning up in changing the business and assisting others. Matt had a staggering vision, and together, the imaginative and caring couple made just about 50 distinct manuals for various Lego sets!
In any case, since they couldn’t stay aware of the appeal, they chose to attempt to redistribute. At the point when they understood that the time had come to call up for some expert assistance, throughout the following scarcely any years, Matt attempted to contact Lego themselves to check whether they were keen on contributing to the project.
Big Dreams
Matt was ambitious and passionate and he had great expectations to allow those who can’t enjoy building Legos because of their eye defects. He also tried to create some connections with the Lego company, but he was not successful until 2017.
“[The opportunity to build Lego sets is] very important to blind children, because they can’t use photographs, they can’t use pictures, and as a result, they really get left out of a lot of knowledge that sighted people are used to. And it’s just very important that they have the opportunity to build this miniature Lego world out of a jumble of bricks, and really know that what they thought was impossible is now possible,” Matt shared with the Washington Post.
Building Sets by Lilya’s Bedside
2017 ended up being a clashing year for Matt. Tragically, the cherishing and rousing Lilya had been diagnosed with cancer. Yet, the dynamic couple’s work and cooperative energy were so valuable and imperative to them, that in any event, when Lilya was in hospice, Matt would visit her and assemble sets by her bedside.
Discussion about inspiring and charming! In any case, her well being was disintegrating all the more every day, until she tragically lost the fight against her sickness. This shocking misfortune wouldn’t be the end of Lilya’s Lego inheritance, however.
Sometimes a Tragic Loss Can Give Us an Unexpected Strength
Here and there with a grievous misfortune, can come an incredible quality and wave of inspiration that we never would’ve anticipated. Furthermore, with the shocking loss of Lilya’s passing, came some inspiration and luck for Matt’s undertaking. Matt was more decided than any other time in recent memory to pursue his fantasy about sharing Lilya’s imaginative creation.
He needed to guarantee that “others benefited from her idea of creating Lego building instructions for those with no or limited sigh,” Matt further disclosed to Today. Thus he contacted the establishment once more, in order to keep Lilya’s Lego inheritance alive.
Taking Action
When Matt was still a teenager, he tried to turn his vision into reality. Consequently, in 2017, this passionate teenager got the chance to reach out to the Lego company. Can you guess how excited he was?
“I got in touch with the LEGO Foundation and asked them if they would be interested in creating their own text-based instruction for their sets. And the amazing thing is now, Lego is taking action… so that a blind child can build their sets on their own,” Matt excitingly expressed with the Washington Post.
Giving Lego Purpose
Following quite a while of difficult work and assurance imparting his thoughts and solicitation to somebody at the Creative Play Lab – where all the enchantment happens with regards to designing new toys – Lego entire heartedly and eagerly hopped on the task and began to make a move.
“When you hear about someone like Matt, it’s just so touching, and really brings so much purpose in what we’re doing at LEGO,” Fenella Charity, Creative Director at LEGO, common with Today. Yet, Matt’s vision was a great deal more complicated than making text-based guidance.
Different Manual Methods
“Our goal was to make these sets accessible to as many people as possible, in whichever ways are easiest for you,” Matt further explained to the Washington Post. As there are many types of sight disabilities, Matt wanted to ensure that each visually impaired person would be able to use his manuals regardless of the defect she/he has.
Thus, to accomplish that goal, he made sure to include different types of methods for the guidebooks:
Screen reader – a program that allows your computer to read the digital manual out lout to you
Audio version – pre-recorded instructions read out loud to you
Braille reader – a physical Braille text-based manual that deciphered the graphic manual
Special Sets with Separate Bags
Lego has now come up with 4 different programs for people with eye defects to use text-based to audio-based manuals. All these were because of Matt! Apart from these different methods, the pieces are divided into separate bags for easy use.
“I hope it really engages blind children and shows them that they can build, they can do this themselves. And it also teaches them about the world around them. But I also want them to feel like there’s nothing stopping them from achieving whatever they want to do in life,” Matt further clarified to Today.
Lego’s Vision and Developments
Lego now shares Matt’s vision- to give anyone who is visually impaired the opportunity to build and enjoy their sets without getting help from anyone. As Lilya and Matt had to spend around a month to finish a set, the Lego foundation had put their Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence team in order to make this process more efficient without wasting much time.
“[The team] developed new AI software to translate LXFML data (LEGO Exchange Format Mel Script) from the visual digital building instructions to text-based descriptions of braille and voice commanded instructions. Speech synthesis company, CereProc then provided the Software Development Kit and the voice that reads the instructions,” Lego explained on their official website.
Changing the Toy Industry
Alongside Matt’s official site for guidelines, Lego likewise made their own site for directions (www.legoaudioinstructions.com). Would you be able to envision exactly how energizing and contacted the entirety of this must’ve been for the youthful and sweet 17-year-old Matt? Intending to motivate others, Matt changed the whole toy industry for children and grownups encountering similar inabilities that he’s had since early stages.
Also, obviously, he didn’t do only it. While Lilya couldn’t see exactly how much her inventive thought had created, Matt inclines that she’s been pleased. “I think [Lilya would] be very glad that we came this far…We’d always hoped that it would — we weren’t sure it would — but I think she’d be happy,” Matt imparted to the Washington Post.
The Once Impossible is Now Possible
It was obvious that Matt was born to do great things. It seemed like Matt wouldn’t stop here, he was so inspired as he was successful in achieving his dreams. So he had expectations to further develop his project.
“I would like to get my instructions out to the blind community. I would like every blind person to be able to download the instructions, buy a set, have a sighted person sort the pieces, and feel on par with a sighted builder. I want every blind person to feel that once the impossible is now possible; that he or she can now build a miniature LEGO world,” Matt shared on his website.
A Strong, Sturdy Path to Move Forward
It was because of Matt’s vision most of the people in the world got inspired and especially Lego. Even though developments and improvements were going on, Lilya and Matt were able to make a change in the Lego industry.
“Matthew’s story demonstrates the power of LEGO play. It brings people together, helps to build confidence, and sparks creativity. It has been an honor to work with Matthew, his passion and energy are truly inspiring,” Lego Creative Director Fenella Blaize Charity stated on Lego’s official website.