Blind people are known to have superior perceptual abilities in their remaining senses. Several studies suggest that these enhancements are dependent on the specific experience of blind individuals, who use those remaining senses more than sighted subjects. In line with this view, sighted subjects, when trained, are able to significantly progress in relatively simple tactile tasks. However, the case of complex tactile tasks is less obvious, as some studies suggest that visual deprivation itself could confer large advantages in learning them. It remains unclear to what extent those complex skills, such as braille reading, can be learnt by sighted subjects. Here we enrolled twenty-nine sighted adults, mostly braille teachers and educators, in a 9-month braille reading course. At the beginning of the course, all subjects were naive in tactile braille reading. After the course, almost all were able to read whole braille words at a mean speed of 6 words-per-minute. Subjects with low tactile acuity did not differ significantly in braille reading speed from the rest of the group, indicating that low tactile acuity is not a limiting factor for learning braille, at least at this early stage of learning. Our study shows that most sighted adults can learn whole-word braille reading, given the right method and a considerable amount of motivation. The adult sensorimotor system can thus adapt, to some level, to very complex tactile tasks without visual deprivation. The pace of learning in our group was comparable to congenitally and early blind children learning braille in primary school, which suggests that the blind’s mastery of complex tactile tasks can, to a large extent, be explained by experience-dependent mechanisms. Several studies suggest that these enhancements are dependent on the specific experience of blind individuals, who use those remaining senses more than sighted subjects. In line with this view, sighted subjects, when trained, are able to significantly progress in relatively simple tactile tasks. However, the case of complex tactile tasks is less obvious, as some studies suggest that visual deprivation itself could confer large advantages in learning them. It remains unclear to what extent those complex skills, such as braille reading, can be learnt by sighted subjects. Here we enrolled twenty-nine sighted adults, mostly braille teachers and educators, in a 9-month braille reading course. In blind people, the onset of blindness largely determines proficiency in braille reading in adulthood. Congenitally and early blind individuals are able to achieve braille reading speed of 80–120 words-per-minute and more [ 13 , 19 – 21 ], whereas late-blind people usually read two to three times slower and many of them struggle to learn braille at all [ 4 , 13 , 20 , 22 ]. In sighted subjects, several days of blindfolding was shown to have beneficial effect on learning to recognize single braille characters [ 23 , 24 ]. In fact, children with residual sight are sometimes blindfolded to speed up the braille learning process (see braille teachers reports cited in: [ 25 ]). We show that most sighted adults can learn whole-word braille reading, given the right method and motivation. The pace of braille acquisition in our sighted subjects was comparable to that of blind children learning braille reading in school [ 27 – 29 ]. Thus, our results might suggest that experience-dependent mechanisms largely account for the blind’s mastery in complex tactile tasks. Methods Subjects Thirty-six individuals initially took part in the study (32 females, 4 males; median age = 27, range = 22–49). All were right-handed, fluent in Polish and had normal or corrected to normal vision. Some studies link this with lack of professional braille education specifically tailored to late blind, adult subjects [ 13 ] and a decrease in tactile acuity with age, which might make learning braille later in life increasingly difficult [ 4 , 7 ]. However, a large variance in braille reading fluency is also observed within congenitally/early blind and late blind populations [ 13 , 20 , 22 ]. This variance was shown to be related to inter-individual differences in perceptual and cognitive abilities, such as tactile acuity, phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory [ 33 ]. Although this comparison should be treated with caution, given differences in curriculum, workload, motivation and cognitive abilities among blind children and our subjects, it suggests that visual deprivation does not significantly increase the pace of achieving braille reading fluency. Thus, our results might suggest that experience-dependent mechanisms largely account for blind individuals’ proficiency in complex tactile skills, such as braille reading. We cannot exclude, however, the possibility that visual deprivation becomes critical at further stages of braille learning and higher braille reading speeds. One study, for example, shows that tactile processing is accelerated in congenitally blind braille readers relative to sighted subjects [ 2 ], which can be important at high braille reading speeds but not necessarily at the initial stage of learning. Given that the blind’s advantage was found both for the preferred reading finger and for the opposite index finger, the authors suggest that Further studies are needed to resolve whether visual deprivation produces perceptual enhancements that cannot be achieved during prolonged and complex training. Conclusions In summary, we show that most sighted adults can learn whole-word braille reading, given the right method and a considerable amount of motivation. Thus, the adult sensorimotor system can, to some level, adapt to very complex tactile tasks without visual deprivation. Given that pace of braille learning was similar among blind children and our sighted subjects, our results might suggest that experience-dependent mechanisms largely account for the blind’s proficiency in complex tactile tasks.