i have not tried teaching piano lessons to a blind person, but i have had the opportunity to just spend time with a person who was blind. they need a lot of encouragement (because discouragement is easy).
if i were to teach a blind person, i would tell them about maria theresa paradis who was taught by 'kozeluch' and described in more detail here:
www.mozartforum.com/Contemporary%20Pages/Kozeluch%20Contemp.htmanyway, he must have been a pretty awesome teacher (don't know if he wrote about his methods) and she must have been a great student because she played by memory over 60 piano concertos. in 1784 she commissioned mozart to write her one for an upcoming trip to paris.
there's another thread that someone asked a similar question on - and so i researched a little beyond what i put there (some creative ideas for teaching) and found that
www.hadley-school.org/Web_Site/8_a_play_with_braille.asp gives yu the basic braille to use (if you want to use braille on the keyboard with little beads under tape?).
i suppose if you brailled music with tape on paper it would be readable too. you'd have to make the staff a little bit more enlarged - or you could make the staff raised somehow and the notes transferrably read (after learning braille letters) to simple raised notes. i've found, that if you have a good couple of hours - (blind people enjoy the time spent) - you could actually engage them in some kind of papermaking activity that would involve molding the songs onto a page they could 'feel.'
www.dancingdots.com has some ideas, too.
basically, whatever you do with a blind student is good. they often run into a 'wall' of teachers that don't have patience or won't try to find another solution if one doesn't work. one size never fits all. part of teaching is relaxing and just having fun. basically on a really simple level - you are showing them how to communicate. and, if they take it as far as possible - they might become teachers one day to other blind students (since they understand how it works to learn as a blind student) and possibly fantastic piano tuning skills.
Topic: Teaching blind people