World Braille Day

Did you know that Braille was created by a young man of only 15 years?

Louis Braille lost his sight in an accident he suffered in childhood and in 1824 at the age of 15 he developed a code for the French alphabet in an improvement to "night writing". The nocturnal writing was developed by Charles Barbier in response to Napoleon Bonaparte’s request that his soldiers could communicate with each other silently and without any light source.

In 1821, Barbier visited the Royal Institute for the Blind where he met Louis who identified two major defects in the code, the first representing only sounds, the code was unable to render the spelling of words. The second, the human finger could not encompass the entire 12-point symbol without moving, and therefore could not move quickly from one symbol to another. Braille’s solution was to use 6-point cells to assign a specific pattern to each letter of the alphabet.

The first 10 letters of the alphabet use 4 upper points, while the next 10 are identical, but with the addition of a point at position 3. This distribution is called Decade and can be seen more easily in the chart below.

Baille Alphabet

The great gain from this creation is the inclusion of people with hearing impairment in all public places, making these people more autonomous. Thank you, Louis Braille, your determination has changed the course of history for many people!