How Do Blind People Read? Braille, Audio, Apps

Blind people read in three ways: by touch, in braille on paper or on a refreshable braille display; by ear, with audiobooks, screen readers and camera apps that read printed text aloud; and, when they have some sight, with their eyes, using large print or magnification. Many combine them, depending on what they are reading.

That is the short answer. Below is how each method works, with figures from the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), the Library of Congress's National Library Service (NLS) and a survey of screen reader users. Every source was checked on October 27, 2026.

Key points

• Braille is read with the fingertips, cell by cell. In contracted braille, one cell can be a whole word: the sentence in our example takes 28 cells instead of 55, not counting spaces.
• Refreshable braille displays show digital text in braille with pins that rise and fall. The NLS lends them free to its patrons: about 8,500 were in the hands of patrons and libraries by the end of 2024.
• At the Library of Congress's library for blind readers, audio is the most used format by far. In fiscal year 2024 the NLS circulated 21.85 million audio items and 605,266 braille items, so braille was 2.7% of everything it lent.
• Screen readers speak what is on a screen. In WebAIM's survey of 1,539 users, 91.3% used one on a phone or tablet.
• Camera apps such as Microsoft's Seeing AI read printed text aloud as soon as the phone's camera sees it.
• Many people who are legally blind read print. In APH's January 2025 census, 73.44% of registered students who read in some medium were visual readers.
• "Fewer than 10% of blind people read braille" is a 1996 estimate by the American Foundation for the Blind that the NFB repeated in 2009. There is no reliable current national figure: a 2022 systematic review found the sources behind it outdated, invalid or both.

The ways blind people read, at a glance

The NLS figures are items circulated, not people: one reader can borrow many items, so they measure use, not how many people read each way.

Reading by touch: braille on paper

Braille is a code of raised dots read with the pads of the fingers. Each cell has room for six dots, two columns of three, and each combination stands for a letter, a number, a punctuation mark or, in contracted braille, a whole word or group of letters. If you are new to it, start with what braille is; the technique of reading it, hand position included, is in our guide on how to read braille.

English braille has a contracted form, called grade 2, in which one cell can stand for a whole word or a group of letters. Our translator's engine, the same one behind the braille translator, turns this sentence:

Blind people read with their fingers, their ears and their eyes.

into 55 cells spelled letter by letter, and into 28 cells in contracted braille, 49% fewer, not counting spaces. Each space is a blank cell too, so with the ten spaces it is 65 against 38:

⠠⠃⠇ ⠏ ⠗⠂⠙ ⠾ ⠸⠮ ⠋⠬⠻⠎⠂ ⠸⠮ ⠑⠜⠎ ⠯ ⠸⠮ ⠑⠽⠑⠎⠲

A few words show where the savings come from:

In "read", the letters ea share a single cell; "people" and "knowledge" are one cell each when they stand alone. The full system is in braille contractions. The code is Unified English Braille, which the NLS adopted in 2016.

Where do blind readers get paper braille? In the US, one large source is the NLS library network. In fiscal year 2024 (October 2023 to September 2024), the NLS had 28,517 books in hard-copy braille and circulated 157,557 braille items on paper. Since a 2022 pilot, its Braille-on-Demand program also lets patrons request paper braille books every month and keep them; patrons had ordered more than 11,500 of them by early 2025. Other sources, from free Bibles to children's books, are in where to get braille books. Braille is also on paper's everyday cousins: labels, elevator buttons and room signs.

Reading by touch on a screen: refreshable braille displays

A refreshable braille display is a row of braille cells made of small pins that rise and fall. It connects to a phone or computer, the screen reader sends it the text, and the pins change as the reader moves through it. The same person can read a novel, an email or a spreadsheet in braille without a single sheet of paper.

iPhones support it out of the box: VoiceOver connects to Bluetooth braille displays, and the reader can choose six-dot or eight-dot, contracted or uncontracted braille, in several languages. The NLS apps work the same way: BARD Mobile on iOS lets patrons download braille books and read them on a Bluetooth display, and the Android app has done so since 2022.

A 2016 amendment to the NLS's founding law allowed it to provide braille displays; the first NLS Braille eReaders went to patron testers in 2017, and in 2024 they became available to any patron who wants one. By the end of that year about 8,500 were in the hands of patrons and network libraries. Electronic braille is now most of the braille the NLS lends: 447,709 electronic braille downloads against 157,557 paper items in fiscal 2024, or 74% of the total.

Prices, models and how to choose one are in refreshable braille displays.

Reading by ear: audiobooks and the NLS

In the numbers of the national US library for blind readers, listening dwarfs every other format. The NLS, a free national library program created by Congress in 1931, lends audiobooks (it calls them talking books), braille and the equipment to read them. It reaches every state through a network of 55 regional libraries, 26 subregional libraries and 13 advisory and outreach centers, and books and players travel by mail, postage free.

Its fiscal 2024 numbers show the balance between formats:

Audio is 97.3% of the total and braille 2.7%: for every braille item, the NLS lent about 36 audio items. The audio collection is larger, too: 131,694 books in audio, against 20,951 in electronic braille and 28,517 on paper.

Who can sign up? Any US resident, or American citizen living abroad, who cannot read or use regular print because of a visual, physical, perceptual or reading disability. The players, DA1 and DA2 models with variable speed, are lent free. People with a qualifying print disability can also join Bookshare, an accessible ebook library that lists more than 1.3 million titles.

Reading by ear on a screen: screen readers

A screen reader is software that speaks what is on a screen and lets the user move through it with gestures or keys. iPhones and Android phones have one built in: Apple calls VoiceOver a gesture-based screen reader that describes the screen aloud, and Google's TalkBack lets people who can't see hear what is on their Android screen. On computers, the most used are JAWS and NVDA.

WebAIM, a web accessibility organization at Utah State University, has surveyed screen reader users ten times. Its tenth survey, with 1,539 valid responses collected in December 2023 and January 2024, found:

• 91.3% use a screen reader on a phone or tablet.
• On computers, the primary screen reader is JAWS for 40.5%, NVDA for 37.7% and VoiceOver for 9.7%. In North America, JAWS leads NVDA by 55.5% to 24.0%.
• On mobile, 70.6% mainly use an Apple device and 27.6% Android.
• 38% of respondents with disabilities also use braille output, up from 27.7% in 2012. Among VoiceOver users it is 54.2%.

The sample is people who chose to answer, from many countries, so read the percentages as a portrait of active users rather than a census. The last figure matters: for more than a third of these users, a screen reader is not only a voice but also a braille display. With a display, braille shows spelling and punctuation at a glance, without having the screen reader spell each word.

Reading print with a phone: camera and OCR apps

For printed text that has no braille or audio version, such as mail, a restaurant menu or a medicine box, blind people use apps that recognize text through the phone's camera (OCR, optical character recognition) and read it aloud. Seeing AI, made by Microsoft and listed as free on the US App Store, speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the camera. For a full page, it gives audio cues to line up the camera, then recognizes the text with its original formatting.

Reading print with remaining sight

"Blind" does not always mean seeing nothing. The NFB's 2009 report, citing a 1992 study, put children with some remaining vision at around 85% of all blind children. Many of them read print, in large type or with magnifiers.

APH's census shows it. Each year APH registers the students in the United States and its territories who meet the definition of blindness, so they can receive adapted materials, and records each one's primary reading medium. In the census of January 2, 2025:

Pre-readers have not started reading yet. APH's "symbolic readers and non-readers" are students who do not show the potential to read print or braille in the usual way, students who do not read, and those who fit no other category.

What the braille figures can and cannot tell you

There is no reliable current national figure for how many blind people read braille, and the one you will see most often needs context. The full story of the 10% figure, source by source, is in is braille dying?; here is the short version.

The "fewer than 10%" figure. In March 2009 the National Federation of the Blind published The Braille Literacy Crisis in America, which says that fewer than 10% of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the US are braille readers. The report does not measure it: it cites an estimate the American Foundation for the Blind published in 1996, and the same sentence also puts braille readers at fewer than 40% of people who are functionally blind. Same estimate, two denominators, results four times apart.

The review that traced it. In 2022, Rebecca Sheffield, Frances Mary D'Andrea, Valerie Morash and Sarah Chatfield published a peer-reviewed systematic review of where "only 10% of blind people read braille" comes from. As the American Foundation for the Blind summarized it, the original sources behind the figure are outdated, invalid or both for estimating braille literacy rates, and the authors explain why even estimating a national rate is difficult.

What APH counts. In the 2025 census, braille was the primary reading medium of 5.63% of all registered students, or 9.12% of those who read in some medium. A year earlier the figures were 7.66% and 13.92%. That drop is not a collapse in braille readers: they went from 4,245 to 4,141, a 2.4% dip, while the total grew 32.7%, from 55,382 to 73,505, and visual readers alone grew by 13,852. A percentage can fall by two points in a year with almost the same number of braille readers. APH itself warns that statements about literacy or reading media "cannot be supported using APH registration data".

Who counts as blind changes the answer too. The 2009 report works with an estimate of 1.3 million blind people in the US; the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, as reported by the American Foundation for the Blind, estimates 50.18 million adults who have trouble seeing even with glasses or contacts, or who are blind. Divide the same number of braille readers by either and you get two very different rates.

Why braille still matters when audio exists

Listening is fast and needs no training, which is why audio dominates the NLS numbers. But a voice reads in a line, one word after another. Braille shows what a voice glosses over: spelling, punctuation, capital letters, numbers in a table, the layout of a page. That is why, in WebAIM's survey, more than a third of screen reader users with disabilities pair speech with braille output. And it is the case for learning braille even when audio is available: for writing, studying or checking a document, the details are the point.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, the app we make, is for learning braille, not for reading books. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a braille builder. It does not teach the grade 2 contractions. It is meant for anyone learning the code, such as sighted parents and teachers of a braille reader, or adults who are losing their sight; for the second group, see learning braille as an adult.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (how the subscription works). The braille translator and the braille alphabet on this site need no app. Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Can blind people read regular books?

Not by sight, if they have no usable vision, but they can read the same titles in other formats: as an audiobook, in braille on paper or on a braille display, or by scanning the printed page with a camera app that reads it aloud. In the US, the NLS lends audio and braille books free to anyone who cannot read regular print because of a disability.

Do all blind people read braille?

No. Many read by ear, and many who are legally blind read print with magnification. There is no reliable current national figure for how many read braille: the common "fewer than 10%" is a 1996 American Foundation for the Blind estimate that the NFB repeated in 2009, and a 2022 systematic review found its sources outdated, invalid or both. In APH's 2025 census of blind students, braille was the main reading medium of 9.12% of those who read, although APH warns that its registration data cannot support statements about literacy.

How do blind people read on a phone or computer?

With a screen reader, which speaks what is on the screen: VoiceOver on Apple devices, TalkBack on Android, and JAWS or NVDA on computers. Many also connect a refreshable braille display, so they can read the same text with their fingers.

Is the National Library Service for the blind free?

Yes. The NLS is a free national library program of the Library of Congress. Books, magazines and the players to read them are lent free, and they are mailed and returned postage free. You apply through the network library in your state.

What app reads text out loud for blind people?

The screen reader built into every phone, VoiceOver on iPhone and TalkBack on Android, reads anything on the screen. For printed text, camera apps such as Microsoft's Seeing AI, listed as free on the US App Store, read text aloud as soon as the camera sees it.