World Braille Day

Blog By: Priyanka Rana

World Braille Day

January 4 is celebrated as World Braille Day annually as a tribute to Louis Braille, the visionary behind the braille system. He was born on this day in 1809 in France and became blind after birth due to an accident in childhood. However, he rose above all adversities and invented a system that now helps visually-impaired people worldwide.

World Braille Day: History

At the tender age of 15, Louis Braille created a reading and writing system based on Charlie Barbier’s night writing system which is known today as braille.

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.

This day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018.

World Braille Day: Significance

This day serves as a reminder of the importance of accessibility and independence for people who are visually impaired.

It is also a day to celebrate the importance of braille as a means of communication so that people with visual impairments have the freedom to enjoy all the benefits and be entitled to all services and accommodations.

World Braille Day also aims to raise awareness about the problems faced by people who are visually impaired in doing everyday routine things such as deciding what to eat at restaurants or checking their bank statements.

Facts about Louis Braille:

Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, France, on January 4, 1809. He accidentally injured his eye with a stitching awl kept amongst his father’s tools. The infection from that eye spread to the other one as well and he lost his sight completely by the age of 5.

Even though he was blind, Braille was determined to get an education. He attended the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, where he did very well in his studies.

Braille published his first book written in Braille in 1829. This book was a three-volume edition of “Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them.”

The Braille system was finally accepted as a means of communication by the Institute in Paris in 1854 after much resistance. This came two years after Braille passed away. Today, the system is used by millions of visually impaired people around the world to read and write.