The world celebrates Braille Day on January 4, the birthday of Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille.
The Braille script is a script used by the blind to read by touching up-highlighted dots on the page.
Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 in a small village near Paris, France. His father was a tanner (leather processor), and one day, when he was 3, Louis was playing with his amulet and was injured in the eyes. He lost his sight but his parents sent him to study in the company of sighted children. At the age of 12 he was sent to study at a school for the blind. At the school, founded by Valentin Howie, the children learned to read with the help of embossed letters they touched. Braille learned this way, but encountered difficulties because the letters were very large and so the books were very heavy and large.
The books were also very expensive, as they were printed using a special printing press with barbed wire. The letters were also too close to each other and made it difficult to read. The school where he studied at Braille had only fourteen books, and despite the difficulty of reading them, he read them all.
Braille was looking for a simpler method that would allow the blind to read. In 1821 a soldier named Charles Barbia appeared at the school, telling of a method he had invented that allowed soldiers on the battlefield, who were inside canals, to correspond with each other without revealing their place. He called the method "night writing" and it was based on the use of matrices of twelve prominent points. Barbia's method was cumbersome and rejected by the military, but Braille decided there was potential in the idea of using highlighted points, and developed a method based on six-point matrices.
In 1852 Braille died of tuberculosis. Two years after his death, the Braille letter was accepted as standard.
 |
| Pictured: Doodle (Google Scribble) made by Google in honor of Louis Braille's 107th birthday, in 2006. (link) |
Nowadays, the computer has taken the place of heavy braille books. There are special Braille keyboards and computer monitors that highlight the Braille so that a blind person can read them.
Braille Day is an opportunity to raise awareness for the blind and visually impaired, and that they need help and consideration. This is also a great opportunity to remember that limitations can be overcome, and that if you want, you can always find alternative methods to do things that seem obvious to people without disabilities.
 |
| Pictured: Braille 'n Speak PDA that works with Braille technology and provides voice output. link |
 |
| Hungarian tactile cube suitable for the blind and visually impaired (link) |
January 4 is also Trivia Day and Hypnosis Day