Riley Cross’s family travelled around Australia in a caravan for three months, and his braille teacher joined them on the adventure.
The 12-year-old, who is legally blind, began remote braille lessons from his home in northern New South Wales last year.
When his family decided to travel around the country’s southern coastline, they didn’t want Riley’s lessons to stop, so they adapted the classroom along their trip.
Riley would take video calls with his braille tutor outdoors, while his computer and brailler — a device that turns online files into braille — rested on a boogie board.
On days filled with hours of driving, the family pulled off to the side of the road or stopped in a town along the way for the lessons.
“We were doing it five days a week, half-an-hour lessons on the road,” mum Tammy Cross said.
When internet service was limited, Riley and his mum would visit the information centre and “hook up to power and do the lesson” there.
“It was crucial to keep the consistency with Riley’s progression with braille,” Ms Cross said.
Riley said he wanted to learn braille to make it “easier” for him to get through school.
“I was still trying to learn on the road,” he said.
Braille maps and tactile animals
His braille teacher — Tricia d’Apice from NextSense in Sydney — feels like she’d been around Australia, too.
In the lead-up to the three-month holiday, Ms Cross provided her with an itinerary of the family’s trip.
The tutor created a map of the family’s journey, fact sheets about each destination, and a quiz about the trip — all in braille.
“I got to research all the stuff, and then be on the holiday with them,” Ms d’Apice said.
She also created tactile pictures of animals native to the areas the family were visiting.
“I could put that onto a thermal paper and, when it was heated, the lines were raised on it so he could get the actual shape of the animal he might encounter in that area,” she said.
Riley was sent all the resources ahead of the road trip and, once the family took off, Ms d’Apice began video-calling to guide him through the material.
“It didn’t really matter where Riley was, as long as he could get internet access,” she said.
She said the braille tutor noted all the different backgrounds and sounds during the lessons.
“[Ms d’Apice] would say, ‘Where are you parked today? I can see out the window’,” Ms Cross said.
“Then she could hear our background, so she’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a different bird noise. You’re in a different place today.’
“It was awesome to share the journey with her.”
Ms d’Apice said remote braille lessons weren’t a new concept, beginning long before learning and working online became popular during COVID-19 lockdowns.
“I personally have been doing remote braille lessons for about 17 years,” she said.
“They started researching the process in 2001, so it’s been a while.”
Ms d’Apice said learning braille is crucial for people who are blind and low vision.
“Braille is just as important to blind people today as print is still important to sighted people,” she said.
‘We’ll keep that forever’
The regular lessons on the road helped improve Riley’s fluency and progression in learning braille.
“Because of the consistency of the lessons, there was definitely a big improvement towards the end,” Ms Cross said.
Riley said, “It was cool getting to know stuff before we went there”.
Ms Cross said she was so grateful to Ms d’Apice for making it possible.
“The book about our trip, we’ll keep that forever because that was pretty amazing,” she said.