January 4, 2022
WORLD BRAILLE DAY
The UN General Assembly has designated January 4th as World Braille Day to celebrate Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille language, who was born on January 4, 1809 in France.

Louis lost his sight after an accident in his father’s harness shop at the age of three. He later attended the National Institute for Blind Children in Paris, France. There, he met Charles Barbier, a Captain in Napoleon’s army. The Captain taught the students about a communication code using dots called Night Writing. Combining his knowledge in music and the inspiration of code communication, Louis Braille invented a 6-dot fingertip reading system when he was only 15 years old.

Braille is a tactile representation of alphabetic and numerical symbols using six dots to represent each letter and number, and even musical, mathematical and scientific symbols. Braille is used by the visually impaired and partially-sighted people to read the same books and periodicals as those printed in a visual font.

Those who have severe vision impairments face many challenges in life. Some of these challenges include navigating new environments, using a computer, handling cash, and arranging clothes.
In today’s world, advanced technology and voice activation makes a visually-impaired person’s life much more manageable. But one invention, in particular, has helped countless numbers of blind people. Braille gives the partially- and visually- impaired the ability to read and even write letters.

Louis Braille died in 1852, two years before France’s Royal Institute for Blind Youth adopted a braille curriculum. By 1916, schools in the United States were teaching braille to their visually-impaired and partially-sighted students.

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