Dots of Braille

Braille is a system of writing for the blind which uses combinations of raised dots to be read with the fingers. This method of teaching the blind to read was developed by a French teacher of the blind, Louis Braille. Louis Braille was blinded in an accident at the age of three. He was educated with sighted children at the village school. Even without school books, his sharp mind and excellent memory enabled him to excel at his studies.

Braille became a teacher at the National Institute of the Blind in Paris and devoted all his spare time to the search for a truly readable writing for the blind. He realized that, without the ability to read, the blind could never really learn. Charles Barbier, a French army officer, had devised a system of writing consisting of embossed dots and dashes to be used for communication on the battlefield at night. From this, he demonstrated to Braille a reading method for the blind called sonography. Although Barbier’s system was too complex to be feasible for touch reading, Braille recognized its value as a basis for a kind of dot writing that would be simple and small enough to suit the dimensions and perceptual span of the fingertips and permit instantaneous identification of letters.

Louis Braille then set to work on developing this unique reading method. By cutting the height of Barbier's dot matrix in half, he derived the "Braille cell," which resembled the six points of a domino but smaller, from which 63 dot patterns could be formed. For convenience in describing these raised dot patters, Braille numbered the six dots of his cell 1,2,3, downward on the left, and 4,5,6, downward on the right. To create the Braille alphabet, he assigned to 26 of the 63 patterns the values of the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet.

Braille made available to the blind all the various forms of written expression - words, numbers, and the notations for mathematics, science and music. Students were able to take notes in class and write compositions using Braille by placing a sliding metal rule with window-like openings over a board, which contained a piece of heavy paper between the rule and the board. A stylus was used to punch out the raised dots. Most of the sighted teachers were as opposed to the method as the students were enthusiastic about it. Louis Braille died just two years before his system received official recognition.