The History of Braille

Louis Braille was born in 1809, in France. Because of an accident at an early age, in combination with disease, he became blind when still a child. When he was ten years old he was sent to a special boarding school for the blind. Conditions were bad, food scarce, but there was not much choice of schools. The children were taught different trades, but also how to read. The founder of the school had developed a system with raised letters that the children could feel with their hands, and thus read. These books were very large and awkward, in fact the school had only 14 of them. Louis Braille was a bright student and had soon read them all.

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By the time Louis Braille was 12, something important happened. There was a visitor to the school, a former Captain from the French army, who showed the children a system with 12 dots and dashes that had been used by soldiers to communicate in a coded way during the war. This was a very complicated system, but it inspired Louis Braille to develop a six-dot system. He worked for years on this system of six raised dots in different combinations, each combination corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. Because there were fewer dots, they could be "read" with one finger-tip.It took him some years, but finally he had finished. The Braille alphabet was created. He even developed it so it could be used for mathematics.

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The invention of the six-dot raised alphabet system was truly a revolutionary invention. Because of the combination of dots, it didn't take too much space. With this system it was also possible for a person to learn how to write, something that had been impossible with the raised-letters-system.
Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form sixty-four possible subsets, including the arrangement in which no dots are raised.
You would think that such an invention would bring glory to its founder, but this was not the case. Until he died at a young age in 1852, he worked as a teacher at the school where he had been raised, but his method was not taught until after his death. Today he is considered a great person and his body was honored with re-interment in the Panthéon in Paris in 1952.
(Braille alphabet by nickc924)

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Writing Braille can be done in a number of ways. The basic one is using a slate and stylus, where the dots are created by hand. This is done from the back of the paper in a mirrored fashion. When the paper is turned, the raised dots are seen.
Another common way is using a type-writer, a Perkins, with six keys. The combination of dots are created by pressing down the keys, just like an old-fashioned type-writer.
The development of computers has also had an enormous impact on the lives of the blind and visually impaired. There are printers, Braille embossers, that can be connected to computers. With a special soft-ware, the text is "interpreted" to Braille and embossed on the printer.

There are a number of different versions of Braille:

GRADE 1: This basically is the alphabet, 26 letters and numbers. Mostly used in the beginning, when starting out with Braille.

GRADE 2: Here, contractions are added. For example, the letter b means but, the letter c stands for can. There is one contraction which means -ing, used in the end of many verbs. This is the most common form of Braille. Using contractions makes the literature a bit more compact.

GRADE 3: This is a kind of Braille shorthand. Full of contractions, it is mostly used in personal notes.

"Braille has been adapted to write many different languages, including Chinese, and is also used for musical and mathematical notation. Its invention has also lead to new ways to help people with disabilities, such as detectable warnings, which are also known as 'Braille for the feet'."
from OMNIGLOT

Picture by dbtac7

Since Braille is so important and has had such an enormous impact on the lives of millions of people, Braille Week is arranged every year. Awareness, fund raising and information. Braille is not just a language, like English or French. It is a system that can be used with basically any language in the world, enabling blind and visually impaired to read and write.
Braille week 2011 was supported in the UK by Susan Boyle and X Factor's Joe McElderry. Also many blind singers were featured. The message is loud and clear- BRAILLE IS IMPORTANT!

Read more here about NATIONAL BRAILLE WEEK

A 1920s Braille Press



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Even though Braille was invented so long ago, and is widespread in the world, most blind and visually impaired do not know how to read Braille. How come? There are a number of reasons. One, naturally so, is electronics. Many people have programmes on their computers and mobile phones that read the screen loud instead of using Braille displays. (You can even choose between American or British English on these programmes!) In many countries many books and a lot of information are also available on audiocassettes or cd. There is no need to read Braille.

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But often it is because of lack of understanding and/or money that children are not taught Braille. Some seeing teachers feel that if the children can see at least a bit, they should not be taught Braille, but learn how to read ink-script instead. (To this many reply that why does one have to exclude the other?) Then there is the lack of Braille teachers. Which is also a result of lack of funds. A complex issue, that blind organizations around the world are working hard to resolve. In America the government authorized the minting of the 2009 Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar with a portion of the sale of each coin going toward a revolutionary and comprehensive Braille literacy campaign.
(Picture by cafecollective)

Read more about the launch of the coin here

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Among the famous blind people we can mention Ray Charles, Andrea Boccelli, Stevie Wonder, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Galileo Galilei, Claude Monet and Ella Fitzgerald!

Blindsight is a movie featuring Erik Weihenmayer leading a group of blind children to climb Mount Everest. They are students at a Tibetan school for the blind, founded by Sabriye Tenberken. These two amazing people are also blind! This only goes to show that nothing should prevent us from pursuing our dreams!

Erik Weihenmayer is the first blind person to conquer Mt Everest and Sabriye Tenberken is a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Below you will find some links to read more about their fantastic lives.

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One of the most famous blind people is Helen Keller, born in 1880 in the US. She became blind and deaf before two years of age. When she was still young her family employed a teacher, one who had been blind before, Anne Sullivan. She taught Helen the signs for the letters of the alphabet. Then she would "spell" the words in Helen's hand to communicate with her. One day she put Helen's hand under running water at the same time as she spelled the word water to her. Suddenly Helen understood that the word "water" meant the water which she felt pouring over her hand. This opened up the world to her.
Being a bright student, she went to college with the help of Miss Anne Sullivan. While she was in college she wrote her book called "The Story of My Life". With the money she earned from the book she was able to buy a house.
Helen Keller became an author and speaker. She is today remembered for her advocacy for people who have disabilities. She was also a suffragette, a radical socialist, and a supporter of birth control. She died in 1968.
(Picture by Evelynmine)

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