Reading with their hands

Look at the people in this picture. Are their eyes closed or open?

Their eyes are closed, but they are reading. These people are blind, but just because they can't see doesn't mean they can't read. Instead of using their eyes, they use their fingers to read.

They are reading Chinese, but their fingers are not just feeling the shapes of the characters. Instead, each character is made into a group of bumps that have a certain shape. When blind people feel the shape of the bumps, their fingers recognize the words.

This is just like when your eyes look at the shape of a Chinese character or the spelling of an English word and recognize its meaning.