Braille was invented by Louis Braille in 1821 when he was just 12 years old and is now the standard system used all over the world. Braille is a method of reading for the blind using six raised dots to communicate letters, numbers and symbols. When he was three, Louis Braille became blind due to an accident in his father’s shop. While at a special school for the blind, Louis learned about night writing -the basic technique of using raised dots for tactile writing and reading, which was developed by Charles Barbier. Based on this technique, Louis developed the six dot system for reading that correlated to normal spelling.
More about braille:
- Louis Braille was passionate about music and extended his tactile reading system to musical notation.
- Of the 285 million people who are visually impaired worldwide, 39 million are blind.
- Instead of paper and pencil, people use the slate and stylus to communicate in braille.