When: annually, January 4.
World Braille Day is an annual day on 4 January. This is an awareness day for the importance of braille as a means of communication for those who are blind or visually impaired worldwide.
Resolution 73/161
Thanks to United Nations (UN) Resolution 73/161, World Braille Day is on the birthday of Louis Braille (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852). Louis Braille is the inventor of the reading and writing system for visually impaired people, Braille.
Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles
Louis Braille was attached to the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Young Blind People). This institute was founded in 1785 under the name Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institute for Blind Youth). After the French Revolution, the institution was renamed. After 1815 it merged with Le centre hospitalier national d’ophtalmologie des Quinze-Vingts (the Quinze-Vingts national ophthalmology hospital), specialising in ophthalmology. With that, the name was changed again. The new name was then Institut national des aveugles travailleurs (National Institute for the Working Blind). From this period, the institute faced mismanagement under the leadership of Sébastien Guillié. This shows how this group of individuals was handled during a certain period of history. He was known for treating students in a very cruel manner. What did not help this was the relocation of the institute to a former prison. It was only in 1821 that Guillié was dismissed, after years of being allowed to have his way. Braille visited the institute in 1819 and was subsequently appointed a teacher.
Braille developed the reading and writing system for a reason. It is not just a system for persons who cannot see at all. Persons with a very limited field of vision also use the system. It is a system that is used worldwide today. This was not the case in Braille’s time. When he went blind in one eye due to an accident while sewing in his father’s shop at the age of three and then lost his eyesight completely due to an infection, his world changed. He was faced with a world where it was almost impossible for those with limited or no vision to live independently. Getting an education was not even an option for many children. Training venues were very limited. That Braille received a scholarship to attend an education was exceptional. He trained at the National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Youth) in Paris. This institute would later lay the foundation for similar institutions around the world.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Charles Barbier de la Serre
Only in 1843 did the wretched conditions in which the educational institute was located come to an end. Braille was by then teaching there, using the system he developed. That system was not entirely new, he adopted it from Charles Barbier de la Serre (May 18, 1767 – April 22, 1841). This captain from the French army is the actual inventor of the base from which Braille developed a system we know today as Braille.
Charles Barbier de la Serre is also referred to as Charles Barbier. He was commissioned by Napoleon to develop an Ectriture Nocture or Night Script. A form of stenography and cryptography. This script was thus twofold, it had to be encrypted and it also had to be decipherable or readable at night. The condition for this was that no light sources had to be used. To do this, Barbier used dots, a matrix of two by six dots. That system would become the basis for Braille.
Age 12
Braille understood by the age of 12 that there was such a thing as this Night Script developed by Barbier. That was in 1821. With that, he set to work so that the dots could be better “understood”. By making the higher ones. In 1824, he finished this and was able to present it. Each letter was given a column and Barbier’s 12 dots were reduced to six. In the first version, they were not just dots but dashes. That was in 1829 when he presented a final version. In a subsequent version in 1837, the dashes had disappeared and would remain so. Here, a distinction between larger dots and smaller dots was important. This was a text system; a music system would follow later (musical notation). This stemmed from Braille’s desire to do something with that too.
In 1839, Braille presented a new system for writing letters based on what he had devised. What was special in this case, the letters could be read by persons who were not partially sighted or blind. Important here was the development of the Raphigraphe, which was developed by Pierre-François-Victor Foucault (1797 – 1871). This device could print letters. Foucault was a close friend of Braille.
Resistance
Contrary to what you might think, Braille was not allowed to pass on his writing system to students at the institute. It was not considered interesting enough, at the time. Indeed, resistance to this development arose. When one of the teachers translated a history book using Braille’s invention, he was fired. Only two years after Braille’s death (he died on January 6, 1852, after sixteen years of illness (tuberculosis)), teaching using the system developed by Braille was started after a long insistence by students at the institute.
De ontwikkelingen gingen langzaam. Veel onderwijsinstellingen in andere delen van de wereld bleven vasthouden aan het verzet tegen de introductie van Braille. Pas na 1882 nam het verzet af, behalve in de Verenigde Staten. Daar duurde het nog tot aan de jaren dertig voordat het ook hier een standaard werd.
More information
If you want to read more about this day, check out the UN’s website about this day. The UN has also made available an article on the origins of this day. You can read this article here.
Source: Wikimedia Commons/Ralf Treinen.
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