TRANSCRIPT - Braille Literacy for Babies and Toddlers: What Are You Waiting For? Ð 4/29/24 

>>Emily: I guess that means it's my turn. Thanks, Kate. Welcome, everybody. What a good turnout. Excited to see it. Love talking to myself in my office, as I'm sure you do, if you do any of these online webinars. So today we're going to talk about Braille literacy for babies and toddlers. What are you waiting for? Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of an advance notice that this is not a deep dive into research and data supporting early literacy. So some of you TSVIs in the room or educators are going to know way more about this topic than we're going to get into it. My hope is it's going to promote why it's important to get Braille in the hands of our youngest kiddos as early as we can and perhaps you can share this presentation with families or non-educators who interact with young children and may be doing some of those early childhood services that are so important. As you'll see on the handout, that's just a basic list of some resources that I'm going to talk about today. So, first, we're going to do some real exciting stuff and dive into the Texas Education Code. Don't get too excited. So I just want to point our attention to state law in Texas Section 30.002. It talks about the development of an IEP for students with visual impairment. And one of the things that it says within it is that the IEP for a student with a visual impairment must include instruction in Braille and the use of Braille, unless the student's admission, review, and dismissal committee, known as an ARD here in Texas, determines and documents that Braille is not an appropriate literacy medium. And to continue, it talks about how Braille instruction may be used in combination with other special ed services appropriate to the student's educational needs. And shall be provided by a teacher certified to teach visual impairments. Each shall receive information describing the benefits of Braille instruction. So I'm going to jump back just a second and point at this that the IEP -- so the default for a student -- and I know an IEP is not babies and toddlers. That's an IFSP. I'll get to why this matters in a minute. It must include instruction in Braille, unless determined otherwise. Does anyone want to throw in the chat, do you know if this is specific to Texas or is this a federal law? Look, someone else asked too. What do you think? Is this a federal law or is this a Texas law? I'm seeing federal, federal, federal. Yes. You got it. So this is a federal law. So even though this is written into Texas Education Code, it's also federal law. So it applies to every state. So for any student who has a visual impairment and is on an IEP, the default instruction is Braille, unless the ARD committee -- or IEP committee, if you live in a different state -- determines otherwise. Now in Texas, as I pointed out in the second part of this code, it talks about we have to share what we call the benefits of Braille. And there is a form that we use in Texas and there's a link provided here and in the handout that you can find on the paths to literacy website. But what it says on our benefits of Braille form -- it goes into a lot of information about determining the use of an alternative form or, if you're not going to use Braille, but it asks you some very specific questions if you're in Texas that we use in our ARD committee meetings. Braille instruction benefits students for whom Braille is appropriate medium in the following ways. Braille supports development of accessible and efficient reading and writing. Braille allows the student access to the same written materials in the classroom as sighted peers. Braille supports instruction in correct written language usage, such as structuring sentences, formatting paragraphs, and editing. Braille literacy can be crucial for future employment and success. None of this is probably new to any of you in this webinar today but this is something that in Texas has to be shared with every family that has a child with a visual impairment. So here's some data about Braille in Texas. So in 2022, we had 10,911 students identified as blind, low vision, or Deafblind. And of those, we had 458 that documented that Braille was either their primary or secondary reading medium. In 2023, we had 10,930 students identified as blind, low vision, or Deafblind. We had 471 who identified their Braille reading medium as primary or secondary. But we added a question, because we thought, man, there are a lot of kids accessing Braille that may not use it as a primary or secondary mode of literacy but may still have Braille instruction within their IEP. We asked how many students are getting Braille instruction. And we had 387, on top of the 471. So for us that means 858 of those 10,930 students are accessing Braille. Sorry. That's our bell. So why do you think -- what are some of the ways that a student may be receiving Braille instruction but it isn't their primary or secondary mode of accessing literacy? Can you think of other ways or why they might be receiving Braille? Anybody? A backup plan. They could have a degenerative condition. Just learning, progressive vision. Lots of progressive eye conditions. That's true. Maybe they're even pre-readers and they're not being documented yet as a primary or secondary. Yeah, more tactile skills training. Functional and community words. Exposure. Oh, I'm seeing a lot of familiar names on here. Thanks for coming to the webinar! Yep. Changes in vision. Part of a total communication message. Uh-huh. So there's lots of reasons that a student may be getting Braille but may not be using it primarily for reading and writing at this time. So for Texas, that means only 7.8% of blind, low vision, and Deafblind students are accessing Braille in Texas. Why do you think that number is only 7.8%? I'm just curious what your thoughts might be on why that is the percentage of students accessing any kind of Braille within their IEP programs. Why wouldn't it be higher? I was just talking to a colleague about how we don't know the answer to this question, so I'm open to hypotheses. Technology improvements. Okay. So maybe because they're using speech to text or more other kind of tech. Some TVIs aren't comfortable with Braille. Braille instruction is intensive. Cognition may not allow for Braille. Kids with multiple disabilities. These are all good answers. Pre-readers. Yeah, there's lots of reasons. Lack of advocacy. That's a good one. Yeah. You don't know what you don't know sometimes too. The teams might not. Lack of time. Oh, service time. That's a big one. Yeah, I know a lot of you are struggling to get your minutes in with students and Braille takes a lot of minutes. Parents don't know. Staff aren't trained. Uh-huh. Motor skill difficulties. True. Access to TVIs. Yep. Yeah, all of these are possibilities, right? Any of these things are probably happening in every state. Lack of administrative support. Yep. Sometimes we have to convince the administrators how important Braille is. Yeah, vision is a low incidence disability. That's true. All right. So all of these are good and probable reasons for why the percentage of students accessing Braille in Texas is only 7.8% from those that are blind, low vision, or Deafblind. All right. So why does this matter when talking about babies and toddlers? So why does school-age data matter when we're thinking about early childhood considerations? I don't know if you have an answer to this, I'm just throwing it out there. I think I know why it matters, and I'm about to talk about that, but I'm just wondering if you know. Oh, it predicts what might be recommended. That's a possibility. You know how many kids are getting it in the state, what are the odds your kid is going to get it maybe, or your student. It's a possibility. Plant the seed early and make it positive. Early exposure helps children and families know what to expect. Need to get them started early. Oh, build pathways in the brain. Access -- 

>>Kate: Emily, this is Kate. I'm so sorry. I'm going to hop on and interrupt. Please, please, please, everyone. Make sure that you change the little dropdown in your chat box to say "everyone." We save the chat to be a resource for folks and if you don't have it say "everyone" we can't capture your comment. Please take a minute, change to "everyone." Thank you. Last reminder. 

>>Emily: It's like the voice of God coming out of nowhere. And my bells. Okay. Yeah, educate parents of the rights of children. Start tactile skills instruction early. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So one of the reasons I want to point out the statewide data for Texas is because we believe that we are -- we feel like it's a crisis here. That not more students are accessing Braille or getting access to Braille in their educational programming. And we're trying to do what we can to bring some attention to that. So I am going to share this from the American Library Association. And it basically says what we need to know about early literacy. So early literacy, reading and writing, does not mean early reading instruction or teaching babies to read. It is the natural development of skills through the enjoyment of books, the importance of positive interactions between babies and parents, and the critical role of literacy-rich experiences. Literacy development begins at birth and is closely linked to a baby's earliest experiences with books and stories. Babies learn language through social literacy experiences, parents interacting with them using books. And these experiences also serve to associate books with parental affection, attention, and approval. And, you know, this isn't Braille-specific, this is just early literacy. So for our students, that does mean Braille. All right. So I'm going to ask you to tell me about your kids and relatives. This is a picture of my sighted child, who is now 15, and she still makes that face at me all the time. She would be horrified if she knew I put this picture in here. For those of you who have children of your own or nieces and nephews, godchildren, perhaps, tell me how old they were when you started gifting them books. Go ahead and write in the chat how old were your kids. Birth, birth, newborn, newborn, two months, birth, one. Before they were born. Newborn. Yeah. Baby showers. Books are a great baby shower gift. In the womb, in utero, yes. Exactly. Now, tell me how old they were when you assumed they would be print readers, these babies in your life. In utero, birth. Birth. Immediately. Birth. For children in general, we start gifting them books very early, especially because I'm pretty sure most of the people in this chat are educators or closely related, and we understand the importance of books in early literacy. So of course we're gifting those books early and we're assuming that the kids in our lives are going to be readers, right? That's the assumption. Okay. All right. So here's me a long time ago -- actually almost exactly 19 years ago. This is my son, Eddie, who is now 19. And Eddie was born with optic nerve hypoplasia, for those who don't know. He was diagnosed at four months of age. And here's a picture of him. This is actually in the NICU, before he was diagnosed. He was a late baby so he was the biggest baby in the NICU. He was a ten pounder. Apparently, those issues were unrelated to optic nerve hypoplasia. Going back to the conversation about Braille, here's Eddie. He's a baby. He's blind. Do we have a Braille reader? What do you think? You know Eddie has optic nerve hypoplasia and he's a baby. Doctor says he's blind. Is he a Braille reader? Maybe. Yes. Absolutely. Maybe. Yes. Yes. Don't know yet. Can become one. Okay. So pre-Braille. Unless an FVE determines otherwise. Yes. Luckily, he won't have to have that until he's 3 but an IFSP for sure. Dual media, maybe? Too soon to tell. I want to share a quickly early childhood story about Eddie before I jump to the next slide. And that was, for those of you who serve students with optic nerve hypoplasia, you know they can look 1,000 different ways. It presents in them. It can present in a lot of different medical conditions. And there is little consistency across children. And when my son was diagnosed at 4 months, his TVI said -- she came to talk to me and she said, hey, I have a lot of books about optic nerve hypoplasia. Some of them are very scary, the things that you might read in here and they may or may not apply to your son. She said, do you want me to bring you these books to read or would you like to just work with him, as he is now, and sort of we can revisit this conversation any time. And we made a decision together that we were just going to treat him like a blind baby and promote his learning and try to move him along the developmental milestone section before I learned about all the possible things that could be in his future that might change my expectations for him. And that's just a personal story that was really impactful for me as a young mom. I always thought about that when I was providing early childhood experiences. I used to be a TVI as well and did itinerant services and so I spent a lot of times with families and babies. I always remembered that a conversation about -- let's be honest. We don't know what their future is going to hold but let's treat them like any other baby until we know otherwise. That's a lot of what we did for Eddie. So do we have a Braille reader? Well, if we don't know, then what? Because we probably don't know but we can assume he's going to be literate and because he's blind he's probably going to need Braille. So let's just start putting stuff in his environment. One of the things I put up here were tactile quilts. I have made a lot of tactile quilts. These aren't ones that I made. I stole these off of Etsy, I think. And these are great. Of course you want to make sure babies and toddlers aren't choking on anything on these quilts but I love that one of these has a lot of actual, real-life items on it, which I think is great. Tactile toys, exposure to textures, but also you can start that Braille library. You can start to hold these babies in your lap and read them stories and let them maybe touch the Braille. You know, in hand under hand, we don't want to ruin them from touching the Braille by forcing it. I think it's safe to say we have to assume Braille literacy at this point. You can also assume print. If you have a child with an eye condition that is low vision and you're not sure how significant, you can expose them to print and Braille. What would be wrong with that? I can't imagine anything wrong with that. Are there any other things that you want to throw in the chat that's a consideration for more like a baby that could promote Braille literacy or create a Braille-rich environment? Yeah. Songs and concepts. An exploratory bib. I like that. Routines. That's a good one. Music involving body parts. That's great. Sensory bins. I like that. Tactile boards, sensory boards, fine motor movement. Yep. Yep. Okay. So moving on. Story boxes. Lots of language. Okay. Here's another picture of Eddie. He's a little bit older. He is sitting in a highchair eating some Cheerios with what looks like peas. Looks super yummy. Now, do we know if Eddie is a Braille reader now? What do you think? He's like one, one and a half years old. Do we have a Braille reader? Can we make that decision yet? Question mark. Not sure. Can't tell by the picture. Yeah. Still a possibility. Not sure. Not sure. Yeah. So we don't know. I mean, say he's just a one and a half-year-old who is blind. What's he looking at? We don't know. He's still too young to really decide at this point, right? Yeah. Still expose to print and Braille. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had -- when he was this age, I remember at one point somebody told me that he couldn't discriminate any textures, like the difference between textures. But I would give him a bag with Cheerios and raisins and he would eat all of the Cheerios and leave all the raisins. I was like, he's discriminating something. Yeah. See, with an apparent gaze you might think he had some vision. Tactile learner, though, for sure. Yeah. I can tell you in this picture he wasn't looking at anything. It sure looks like he's making eye contact though. Yeah, we don't really know. We don't know if we have a Braille reader yet. So here he is just a little bit older, sitting in a little chair with a book on his lap with some texture and some Braille. So if we don't know if he's a Braille reader, then what? Well, of course messy play or eating, as you just saw, talking about textures, experience books. Continue building that Braille library. Read to them in Braille. Basically just show them the Braille. Like, their sighted peers, little kids are seeing print everywhere, which we know and we always talk about. We have to be very intentional with Braille so that our students and our little kids can interact with it in their environment. And that's why you just keep building that Braille library. When you're reading them stories you let them put their hands on the book and explore it. To just start knowing that Braille exists. They don't need to know, you know -- they don't have to have developed Braille concepts to start enjoy interacting with Braille. Yeah. Simple tactile pictures can be added. That's what's in this book. They're little textured images of bugs. And so there's lots of things that you can start doing to just expose them to Braille. Now, do we need to know -- do you think we need to know? He's probably two and a half in this picture. Do we need to know that he's going to be cognitively able to read Braille? Do we need that answer right now? What do you think? No, no, no, no. Nope. No, no, no. Thank you for all the noes. There's no reason for anyone to decide right now at 2 years old if he's going to be able to cognitively understand the concept of Braille. I think that sometimes we get caught up in that part of working with families and children where we worry that their diagnosis is very severe and we start to make that decision. And, as Catherine said, we don't need to decide that for him. We can assume, until he tells us he can't. So I think it's important to just point out. I have had students with very significant conditions that I still expose them to Braille. Because I don't want to be the person that, you know, when they're 15 years old, they say, oh, we never had Braille because they assumed I wouldn't be able to learn it. We can't know at this young. That's a good point. The more tools in the tool box the more experiences to success in life. Yep. Yeah. There is no such thing as a non-reader. Ever. Thank you, Kate. You know I agree with that. All right. Here's some more pictures of Eddie that I found. I don't know why I put them in here. Just more experiential stuff. Thinking of places where you could put Braille, you know, and tactile things in your house. Here he is under the Christmas tree pulling on ornaments and checking them out. There's another one of him in a stander where he has a bunch of stuff on his tray. I will say the more I got to learn about the education of blind babies and toddlers, the more I switched out toys for real-life items. So he started to play with whisks and spoons and banging bowls and pans and that kind of stuff, just to provide him with more of that concept integration. All right. So here's another picture of Eddie. He's like 3.5 in this one so now he's definitely a toddler. Do we know if Eddie's a Braille reader in this picture or not? He's sitting on a bouncy ball with me in front of him and I'm loosely holding on to his hands. What do we think? Do we know if Eddie is a Braille reader in this picture? No, no. We don't know. Yeah, you can't tell from the picture and also we don't know any 3-year-old's future academic track is pretty safe to say. We're not really sure. He's a student. He has a significant vision loss. He has a diagnosis indicating he will always have a significant vision loss. So we don't know. We're just going to keep assuming that he's going to be one. So if we don't know, what are we going to do? There's a picture here of Eddie with a cane walking when he's preschool aged and another one sitting on the floor exploring what looks like a lid to a Tupperware container of some kind. What are some things we can do? Braille labels around the home. This is interesting because I think TVIs have opinions about whether or not you put Braille where there's not print. And there's two different camps of thought in that. Personally, I've always been like, well, they're not going to access print off in the distance like their sighted peers, so more Braille around can't hurt. Just kind of put Braille everywhere. Give exposure. More experience stories. Continuing doing that. Find Braille in the community. When you're out in the community and you see it on the bathroom or in a Braille menu or anywhere, talk about it. Continue growing your Braille library. Continue reading Braille stories. Introduce a Brailler and just let them play with it. You know, a lot of our kids can get Braillers really early on and if you can encourage those families or their siblings to scribble on the Brailler and just make up dots on paper and show it to the kiddos, that's not going to hurt anything anywhere. There's no harm in making a Braille-rich environment for a child who is blind or has low vision, especially when we don't know what future literacy needs they're going to have. Tactile pictures to color. Yep. That's a good one. Yeah, I think I had it on my last slide but one of the first Braille experience stories that I did for Eddie was -- he hated bathtime and so I made a book for him that had just the Braille word on each page for parts of the bath. So the first one was like "water" or it was like "shampoo." And I Velcrod a little shampoo bottle in the book so you can smell the shampoo. And the next page a Braille word that said washcloth. And there was a washcloth Velcrod in the book. For some students that use tactile objects where they go from the real object to a symbol of the object to the Braille, you can use Braille through all those parts as well to connect those concepts and just start -- I mean, Braille is an abstract. Just like any print is abstract for children to learn. So the more exposure, the better. It's not going to hurt to have Braille-rich environments for kids. Can you think of other stuff at like this preschool age that you can start promoting Braille literacy that I haven't mentioned? Aside from scope and sequence. Lots of different objects to explore and use and build concepts and background knowledge. Yeah, yeah. I remember always putting a bucket of stuff next to Eddie wherever he was sitting and it would keep him busy. He would put his hand in, pull stuff out, and I would talk to him. Oh, that's a this and that's a that. Just to give language and start labeling things. Yeah. Calendar boxes or boards, story boxes. Yes. Lots of ways to introduce literacy that are super easy and that families can do. And they don't have to be overly complicated. I know that when Eddie was an infant or a baby and people would come by the house and give me a lot of assignments to do, it was always, like, difficult to embrace them. Because I was just in survival mode with young children. So all of the stuff that you can recommend that's easy, talking about what you're doing around the house. Oh, favorite and unfavorite grocery packages. That's good. Like what's just around the house. Let them explore it and talk about what those things are. And then if you can incorporate that stuff into stories of some kind, that's great. Now, there are some mainstream Braille toys that exist and they are, you know, they're not perfect Braille. They're not like the exact size of Braille times, but there are things in the environment or in stores that people can buy. Here's a few things. There's a pop it! In Braille. It has Braille letters and print letters. Hot Wheels car with Braille on the side. LEGO Braille bricks. I love my Braille pop it too. I have it on my desk. It is great that there are more and more things that we can find. These things -- I know the Hot Wheels and the pop it! I have seen at Target but it doesn't have to be specialized. It used to be that you couldn't find any Braille toys unless you ordered them out of a special catalog. Now there are a few options, even though not nearly as many as a we might want. Oh, small blocks with print in Braille. Yep. I have seen the alphabet magnets with Braille that you can put on your fridge. I used to have those a while ago. Sometimes there's also -- gosh, what is the brand? Maybe Vtech. Sometimes they have Braille toys or toys that have Braille letters on them too. Amazon has Braille toys. So you can start to just have this stuff and at least kids are getting their hands on Braille, which is the most -- which is what we want. Now, there are additional resources that you can access too. Because I'm not getting into, like, the whole concept of literacy and what is necessary to build Braille skills, I'm putting on your handout there's a link to Literacy for Little Ones, which is now a free resource from TSBVI that's built around a series of topical trainings focusing on gross and fine motor skills, early concept development, language and communication skills, and emerging reading and writing skills. This is a great resource if you're a TVI and you're working with little ones. I definitely recommend you check that out. I also put on here the Seedlings Braille Books program, which is you can get free books from them through the book Angel Program. You can sign up and I think you get one or two free books a year and they're in Braille. If you're working with families, you can share this resource to add to their Braille library. National Braille Press. Their books are for sale but they sell them at the same cost as if you went into a store and bought the book. National Braille Press used to have bags for babies that were free giveaways. I remember the wait list to get them was really long but they were really cool if you got them. Does anyone know if they still do that? Yeah. Seedlings also gives books to TVIs and National Braille Press, free bags. The American action fund provides Braille books to children, and that's through the National Federation of the Blind. Looking at free resources, I also added the NFB free white cane program, which is not specifically to Braille literacy but I just remember that when Eddie was a baby I got him a white cane that was so cute and two feet long. Because it's just introducing the concept of white cane. He used it to poke at stuff. Probably his sister. Around the living room. Of course there's the American Printing House, which has resources that are more expensive but if you get -- in Texas if you have funding through the Blind Children's Program or alternatively through some other resources, you can access Braille through the American Printing House as well. And there was another -- Hillary Keys put something in the chat, which is the parent literacy brochure for visual impairments, which gives some more resources as well and supports conversations with parents about Braille. Thanks, Hillary. Yeah, more programs. Dots for tots from the Braille Institute. The dolly Parton imagination library. There's lots of ways to get access to Braille for families and help them get Braille libraries. We don't want to be the gate keepers of Braille. We don't want to wait until they get an official LMA in preschool to decide if it's time to start providing Braille instruction. Can you imagine if we let our kids get to preschool before we gave them access to books? We definitely want to promote Braille literacy as soon as we can and in any way we can. Try not to overthink it. That's basically the whole point of my presentation. I knew I wasn't going to be super long today with this topic because basically I just wanted to advocate for getting Braille in the hands of as many babies and toddlers who are blind or low vision as possible. Did I miss anything critical for providing a Braille-rich environment or encouraging families to embrace Braille early on? Or encouraging early childhood providers to embrace Braille early on. Oh. How is my son doing now? Oh, my goodness. You know what? I missed an opportunity. I could have shown you all have video of how he uses Braille. He uses Braille in a very unique way. Not unique but not in the ways that I had expected when he was a 2-year-old. He's a senior here at TSBVI and he uses a combination of tactile symbols and Braille. He's more of a functional Braille user. And we even use it where we just use single letters sometimes. Like on a calendar to signify major events of a day. For example, during summer. He'll have a calendar and, like, there will be days where there's a C on it and that means we're camping. There will be days with an H on it and that means we're home. It's a simplified Braille. He's so good with tactile symbols, he gets them instantly but as you know they're not super portable. As he gets older and works towards vocational skills, we're trying to expand his Braille to use it in ways to write out routines and swapping out tactile symbols for Braille words, which he's learning in school. So that's the way that he is using and accessing Braille. Yeah, I love I am able. He did a lot of I-M-Able in elementary school. It's actually influenced a lot of ways he uses Braille now. For sure. Parents learning Braille is great. Yeah. Braille resources for non-English speaking families. I know a lot of the websites I shared do offer Spanish -- books in Spanish. They would be print and Braille. Does anyone else know of non-English or of resources for non-English speaking families? Oh, include siblings. Yeah, that's a real good way to do it. Seedlings and NFB offer bilingual books. That's great. Yeah. I'm glad they saved this chat because I know I missed some resources on here that have been mentioned. Yeah. That's a good one. Recommendations or insights on Braille expore for families still adjusting to/accepting a visual diagnosis. That's tricky. You know, I have always tried to implement -- to be honest I haven't had a lot of families that had a hard time accepting the diagnosis of their child, once they had it. I feel like the more conversations that you can have about potential futures and providing information about blind adults and opportunities, including that in conversations around Braille. I know it's really hard when they're young for families to think about careers and the importance of literacy and education and employment. And so that's not always the right jump. But I have found that bringing Braille in at least gives them something to hang on to, I guess. Or to identify with, I think is a better way to put it. To help them sort of start envisioning a different future for their child. I don't know if anyone else has good examples. Yeah. Jill said used to have a hard time getting babies referred to ECI. There are some changes in the Texas Administrative Code that's going to make that easier, Jill. But, yeah, it can be hard to get them referred. Uh-huh. Any other things that we should mention? Oh, for CVI children incorporate Braille to tactile at what percent? I think, again, going back to we just can't know for babies and toddlers what their literacy mode is going to be. I know that with children with CVI you definitely want to promote vision usage but it can't hurt to also introduce Braille. That's my opinion. I think that the big caution is that we don't want to make a literacy media decision too early for children and then sort of, like, based on our biases, set them on a trajectory that may not be accurate or may not fit later in life. I think it's really important to keep options open and exposing Braille and print to children with vision loss I think is the safest bet early on. And what I want to encourage families and educators to do. And if some day they have well enough vision that they're successful print readers, that's great. But it would be a disadvantage if they didn't have access to Braille early on and they were Braille readers later. Yeah. No harm. Real objects. Tactile cues to encourage use of vision. All right. Well, that's it, unless there's further discussion or questions. Oh, yeah. So Amy says that families that aren't ready to embrace Braille or a cane are still trying to accept it. But you still talk about it. Yeah. I'm not saying you go into a house and tell a family the way it is, but I think it always is helpful. And especially I have found families love getting free stuff. Getting those bags from the National Braille Press or Seedlings and be able to leave them there. You can say here's some fun books you're welcome to have. If they don't want to accept them, certainly don't make them. The more you talk about it the better it will be. Yeah. Exposure won't hurt. Recommendations for children with a degenerative visual impairment. You know, I think it's the same. You are going to promote Braille in the home. I know that's a hard one too for families to embrace. But having the conversation every time you're with them I think is going to be important. Of course, in a non-assertive, empathetic way. Definitely. Anything else? I'm waiting it out. A little bit of wait time. All right. Well, thank you for coming today. You know, I was talking to Kate earlier and I was like, oh, I hope it's okay. It's not really technical. I want to emphasize the importance of introducing Braille early and often. We can't make those decisions too early. So, thank you.