The majority of adults with a visual disability in the U.S. are also unemployed.

The jobless rate is close to 60 percent, according to the National Federation of the Blind.

Statistics like that, which shed light on the long list of challenges people with vision impairment face, were a driving force behind one father's attempt to help his young daughter adapt to a devastating diagnosis.

Jake Lacourse of Middleborough, Massachusetts, was honored Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for creating a game he calls BecDot. It's designed to help his 2-year-old daughter, Rebecca, learn pre-braille concepts.

Rebecca has Usher syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause profound deafness and progressive blindness.

"We knew the world was not going to adapt to her," Lacourse says. "My entire career has been about solving problems."

Lacourse is a product engineer by day. By night, he worked at home developing the game for Rebecca. The playing surface, made with a 3-D printer, is about the size of a tablet. Four large braille cells run across its front.

When a toy — like a cow or a pig, each embedded with an electronic tag — is placed onto the tablet, the corresponding braille dots for a cow or pig pop up.

Rebecca plays with the BecDot. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

"What we love to see when she plays with it is that all she tries to do is take her finger and mash the dots back down," Lacourse says. "But that's her learning."

The idea is to help young children learn early braille concepts, and get them ready for the long journey of adapting to a world that's built for people who can see. Lacourse wants to market the toy and sell it for about $100.

It's not the first time a parent has built something for a child facing blindness.

In the early 1970s, a Stanford University engineer named John Linvill created the Optacon for his blind daughter Candy. The system used a small camera that users could roll across a line of print. The camera was connected to a box with an array of vibrating pins inside, and the pins would rearrange themselves into the shape of the corresponding letters as the camera moved forward.

Candy went on to receive a doctoral degree in psychology.

The Optacon was a high-tech innovation at the time, and was widely used, says Ike Presley of the American Foundation for the Blind.

Presley says Lacourse's BecDot is commendable and could help other children. He cautions that it probably won't teach young kids the fine tactile skills they'll need to learn braille.