What is Braille?
Human and animals have eyes with which they can see things, humans also use their eye sight to read and communicate with others.
Some people do not have normal eye sight, they are called visually impaired people.
Braille is a system that visually impaired people can use to read by touching with their finger tips. It is an important resource for visually challenged persons that help them to read and communicate.
How Braille System Works?
Braille system has 63 dot patterns (Characters). Every dot pattern has one or more dots arranged in two vertical and three horizontal rows.
Each dot pattern (Character) represents:
- A letter
- A combination of letters
- A common word
- A grammatical sign
- A number or
- A symbol
- Braille codes are available for common languages, mathematics and scientific notations.
Who Developed the Braille System?
A French educator and inventor “Louis Braille” developed the Braille System. He himself was a visually challenged person.
Louis Braille was born on 4 January 1809 in Coupvray, France. At the age of three by an accident with awl, his eye got injured, within a year he was completely blind.
At the age of ten he was sent to “Royal Institute of Blind Youth”. Here he got inspired by the system of communication devised by “Charles Barber”and started to work for his own system of communication for blind persons and completed it in 1824 at the age of fifteen. This system evolved with time.
Why “World Braille Day” is observed?
In 2009, the “World Blind Union” and its partner organizations celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of “Louis Braille”.
After nine years in 2018 UN General Assembly proclaimed that “World Braille Day” will be observed on 4 January every year.
4 January 2019 was 1st “World Braille Day”.
This day is observed:
- to honor the birth of Louis Braille.
- to acknowledge the struggles of blind people
- to raise awareness of the importance of Braille as a means of communication in the full realization of the human rights for blind and partially sighted people.
The present system of Braille was adopted in 1932