How it’s done: Boo working on the production of the Braille dictionary at the YOBM Office in Kuala Lumpur. — Bernama
KUALA LUMPUR: Children with visual impairments who lack access to reading materials in Braille form can now rely on a newly produced Braille dictionary – thanks to a government-backed NGO.
Hakimi Hassan, founder and trustee of the Malaysian Foundation for the Blind (YOBM) – a non-profit organisation registered under the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department, said the problem goes beyond a lack of reading materials.
He said the visually impaired children rely heavily on audio materials and smartphones, resulting in a steady decline in tactile reading skills – even though Braille remains the foundation of their education.
Without Braille, opportunities to grasp spelling, sentence structure and vocabulary development become severely restricted, he added.
“In special education schools, teachers try to fill this gap with their own creativity. But without consistent basic materials, learning often starts from scratch. That is why a basic dictionary is the most crucial starting point,” he told Bernama.
That gap is now being addressed by YOBM through the Illustrated Malay-English Braille Dictionary for Children project, the first of its kind produced in the country since March 2025.
To date, more than 230 volumes of the dictionary have been distributed to three special education schools (SK Klang, SKPK Jalan Batu and SMKPK Setapak), with plans to expand distribution to 35 special education schools nationwide by next year.
“A bilingual dictionary is a fundamental necessity for students. To date, no bilingual dictionary has been provided by the Education Ministry or schools – even for mainstream pupils. The difference is that sighted students can still buy one from bookstores. Visually impaired students, however, have no specialised bilingual dictionary available in the market,” he said.
According to Hakimi, over-reliance on audio learning often leaves pupils unable to independently read simple texts such as labels or instructions, undermining their autonomy and academic performance.
Designed like a child-friendly mini encyclopaedia – with alphabets paired with images, he said the dictionaries were produced according to pupils’ needs: B1 (totally blind and fully reliant on Braille); B2 and B3 (severely limited vision requiring a combination of Braille and high-contrast visuals).
The dictionaries integrate Braille with high-contrast images to help B2 and B3 pupils form mental representations of objects, strengthen early comprehension and prevent “conceptual blindness” as vision deteriorates.
Meanwhile, YOBM Publishing Officer and Information Technology trainer Andy Boo Teck Joo said each dictionary set is produced through a combination of manual and digital processes.
However, physical printing remains the greatest challenge.
“One embosser unit costs RM37,000 and is extremely sensitive. For printers, sheets must be fed one by one. Any mistake affects both text and images,” he said, adding that the entire process is personally supervised.
Despite digital advancements, production capacity remains limited, with only 10 sets produced per day.
Hakimi said YOBM initially began with a bilingual Malay-English adult dictionary combining Braille for both languages.
Although its publication was limited by technical and financial constraints, the experience proved invaluable for developing the children’s dictionary.
Looking ahead, YOBM aims to produce more modern multilingual dictionaries and develop a digital library equipped with text-to-speech features, audiobooks and additional learning modules.
“We want Braille literacy to be a right, not a privilege,” he said.
