The History of Braille

For many blind individuals, the most important route to independence is being able to read and write for themselves. For centuries, various methods of raised print have been experimented with that could be read by touch. As early as the 14th century, The distinguished blind Syrian professor, Zain-Din al Amidi, improvised a tactile method by which he identified his books and made notes. Although he was blind soon after birth, he led a studious life, interesting himself particularly in jurisprudence and foreign languages.

By the first half of the 19th century, there were more than 20 different systems of embossed type in use. They were difficult to learn and even more difficult to read by touch and could not be written by an individual. It was not until 1824, that a reliable system of reading by touch was perfected by Louis Braille. 
 
Louis Braille was born in Coupvray near Paris, France, on January the 4th, 1809. His father, Simon-Ren Braille, was a harness and saddle maker. At the age of three, Louis injured his left eye while playing with a stitching awl from his father's workshop. Due to an ensuing infection, he lost the sight in his left eye. Later, sympathetic ophthalmia led to the loss of vision in his right eye resulting in total blindness by the age of four.  With the support of his parents, Louis attended the local school until the age of ten when he gained a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles, (Royal Institution for Blind Youth) in Paris.

At the time Louis was a student, a rudimentary reading system was being taught but still, writing was impossible.  The reading system that was eventually adopted was based on a method of communication originally developed by Charles Barbier de la Serre who was a French artillery officer in Napoleon's army. Barbier's code was based on 12 dots that represented various sounds which soldiers could use to communicate silently and without light at night. The system became known as "night writing" but proved too complex and difficult for soldiers to learn and was eventually discarded by the French Millitary.

In 1821, Barbier visited the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles, where he met Louis Braille. Louis identified the major failing of the code, which was that the human finger could not encompass the whole 12 dot symbol without moving, and so could not move rapidly from one symbol to another. His modification was to use a 3 dot high by 2 dot wide matrix based on letters, which he perfected by 1824.

The first book in braille was published in 1827 under the title "Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them." In 1839, Braille published details of a method he had developed for communication with sighted people, using patterns of dots to approximate the shape of printed symbols. Braille and his friend, Pierre Foucault, developed a machine to speed up the somewhat cumbersome system of writing.

Over the intervening years, many writing systems have been invented to emboss Braille.  An early device used a "slate" and a "stylus" whereby each dot is punched out from the back of the page and written from right to left.  A wide variety of braille typewriters have also been developed of which the "Perkins Brailler" is the most widely known. With the advent of computers and braille translation software, books can be produced by connecting a braille embosser or can be read using a Refreshable braille display.  With the development of specialised papers, tactile graphics can also be produced by passing print images through a heat unit to reproduce the image as a raised graphic.

The original six dot code that Louis Braille perfected in 1824 has now been extended to an 8 dot code for use with computers and refreshable braille displays. In 8 dot braille, the additional dots are added at the bottom of the cell, giving a matrix 4 dots high by 2 dots wide. 8-dot braille has the advantage that the case of an individual letter is directly coded in the cell containing the letter and that all the 256 printable ASCII characters can be represented in a single cell.

Braille became a well-respected teacher at the Institute where he had been a student.
He was also a talented cellist and organist and played in churches throughout France.  Although Louis was admired and respected by his students, his braille system was frowned upon by school authorities and never taught at the Institute during his lifetime. Braille had always been plagued by ill health, and he died in Paris of tuberculosis in 1852 at the age of 43. On the centenary of his death in 1952, his body was disinterred and honoured with re-interment in the Panthon in Paris.

Today, because of Louis braille's pioneering work, his reading and writing system has been adapted to almost every major national language. His method has revolutionised the primary way of written communication for visually impaired persons around the world and has given them the means to gain a greater degree of independence.