World Braille Day

World Braille Day

The World Braille Day is marked to spread awareness of the importance of braille as a means of communication for the blind.

The event also marks the birth anniversary of Louis Braille, creator of this writing system.

Origin of World Braille Day

The United Nations observed the first official World Braille Day on January 4, 2019

Importance of World Braille Day

There are approximately 1.3 billion people who suffer from distance or near vision impairment. This move was initiated in order to raise awareness of the importance of Braille for such people so they weren’t made to feel deprived of any human rights.

What is Braille?

Braille is a reading system where a combination of six dots represent a letter or number, thus helping the people with visual impairment in reading.

Benefits of Braille

 It provides a tactical representation of alphabetic and numerical symbols and even musical and mathematical symbol to make the communication flow smoother in case of written information.

helps both blind and partially-sighted people to be able to read books and periodicals similar to the ones available in standard text.

As per the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CPRD), Braille as a means of communication is essential in education, freedom of expression and opinion, access to information and social inclusion.

Who was Louis Braille?

• Louis Braille, born on 4 January, 1809 was a French Educator and inventor of a remarkable reading system for the visually impaired.
• Louis himself became blind at the age of 3 during an accident while playing with a stitching awl at his father’s harness shop.
• He later went on to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth on a scholarship at age of 10.

• He developed a system using six raised dots with nothing but an awl itself. He perfected the design by the time he was 15 and shared it with his peers and it later became known as Braille in 1824.
• Although his design was inspired by system invented by Charles Barbier, but Braille was more compact and useful.
• Louis Braille died in 1952 from tuberculosis.
• Louise’s six dots were a revolution for people making it possible for them to access education and communicate freely.
• His contribution for visually impaired people remains unforgotten till date.