Born in 1809 in Coupvray, France, Louis Braille was only three years old when, playing with an awl grabbed in his parent’s workshop, he accidentally injured one of his eyes. In less than two years, both eyes had become infected, and he completely lost vision at the age of five.
Despite his blindness, Louis’ parents, Monique, and Simon-René Braille enrolled their son at the village’s school. As a determined student, Louis Braille learnt by listening and earned a scholarship at the age of ten, enabling him to attend the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, France. While studying, a French Army Officer named Charles Barbier introduced Louis and his colleagues to a peculiar cryptography system used for night-time communication on battlefields. The system involved twelve dots and various combinations, each representing different symbols. The tactile coding system gave Louis Braille the idea of creating a different, but useful coding system which could be used as a form of reading and writing for the blind.
From twelve to fifteen years old, Louis Braille developed a simpler coding system using only a six-dot code. Easy and simple, the code only required to be felt by one finger to be read. Once again, each combination represented different letters and punctuation marks. The final code consists of 64 different symbols in total.
The tactile code was only introduced in 1824. As soon as it was introduced, the Braille code had a huge success: Louis Braille’s peers could learn and read quickly without having to learn through the slow process of tracing and feeling hugged raised printed letters and numbers. The school’s director adopted the Braille code until he was replaced in 1840. The new director banned the Braille, afraid that sighted teachers would no longer be needed if the blind could read by using Braille.
Louis Braille continued to work on his education. At the age of 20, he published his first braille book called Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. He became an accomplished musician, writer, researcher, and teacher at the National Institute for Blind Youth. In 1852, he was forced to retire due to tuberculosis and passed away on January 6th. His code, however, is now recognized as a revolutionary invention and has been adapted worldwide as a mean of communication, reading, and writing for the blind.
Braille’s Bicentennial was celebrated worldwide in 2009 and the genius he was is still celebrated every year on his birthday, every January 4th.
Laurie Le Roux
Worldwide 