On January 4, 1809, Louis Braille is born in Coupvray, France. He would go on to develop the writing system for visually impaired readers that bears his name: braille.
Braille lost his sight in an accident at age three. As a student at the National Institute for Blind Children in Paris, Braille discovered a system called “night writing” that a man named Charles Barbier had invented based on his experience in the French army.
Barbier developed night writing as a way for soldiers to pass messages at night without needing a light to read them. The writing system used raised dots that soldiers could feel with their fingers. Each 12-dot cell represented a letter or phonetic sound. However, because readers could not read a whole cell with one finger, it was difficult for readers to decipher the messages efficiently.
Braille adapted Barbier’s night writing to create his own writing system. Braille’s system used 6-dot cells, and because these cells were smaller, readers could decipher each cell with only one finger. This made it easier for the reader to move quickly from one cell to the next.
It wasn’t until after Braille’s death, in 1852, that schools, governments and other institutions widely adopted his writing system. In 1878, the World Congress for the Blind voted to make braille the internationally recognized writing system for visually impaired people. Because braille is a system of codes and not a language itself, readers can adapt it to represent any language. Today, braille codes exist for at least 133 different languages.
