03/16/2026
What if we taught every child to read the world with more than just their eyes?
Imagine a classroom where braille, sign language, and print were all taught together from day one.
Where a blind child and a Deaf child could talk to each other in hand-over-hand communication because everyone learned the same shared languages from the beginning.
Nobody would be “different.” Nobody would be left out.
But that’s not how we built our schools.
For years, people believed that children who were “different” needed to be taken to a separate room to learn.
Braille, sign language, and other adaptive tools were seen as something only certain people needed so nobody else learned them and that’s exactly how separation begins.
If every child learned braille and sign language right alongside print, we wouldn’t need all these barriers.
We wouldn’t need to rely on a single interpreter or a few specialists to bridge the gap.
Kids would grow up able to help each other, communicate with each other, and understand one another.
Inclusion wouldn’t have to be “added in”, it would already be there.
I remember when schools used to teach daily life skills things like cooking, budgeting, sewing, or even taking care of a pretend baby. Those lessons taught us how to care for ourselves and others.
Teachers were like second parents back then, giving kids the tools to be capable adults. Now, those programs are gone.
And we wonder why so many kids grow up not knowing how to navigate the real world.
I once attended a fundraiser that was supposed to support the blind community, but instead I watched the speaker take the mic and say,
“Braille is yucky, no one should ever have to touch that.”
Then she used the statistic that only 10% of blind people read braille as a reason not to support it.
I had just finished a $500 painting for their cause, and I realized then how far we’ve drifted from what really matters, human connection, communication, and respect.
As our world changes faster than ever, we have to ask ourselves: what will the next generation actually need.
Written by Danielle Frampton
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Photo description
Eight different symbols representing disability. A symbol of a person using a wheelchair, TTYL, hearing aid , sign language, braille, close, captioning, person using a white cane. 
