Who invented braille

Over time, braille gradually came to be accepted throughout the world as the fundamental form of written communication for blind individuals. Today it remains basically as he invented it. However, there have been some small modifications to the braille system, particularly the addition of contractions representing groups of letters or whole words that appear frequently in a language.

The use of contractions permits faster braille reading. It also helps reduce the size of braille books, making them much less cumbersome. Today, we transcribe braille code in many different languages worldwide.

Louis would be very proud to know his creation has given literacy to countless numbers of people over the decades. Consequently, people who are blind can enjoy all the printed-word has to offer just like everyone else. The effect is tremendously empowering and helps them achieve success in school and their careers. Several groups have been established over the last century to modify and standardize the braille code.

Join Our Newsletter Signup today and we'll send you the latest from the visual impairment community, right to your inbox! He also met Charles Barbier, who while serving In the French army, invented a code that used different combinations of 12 raised dots to represent different sounds. Barbier called the system sonography. Those who could not see would decode the dots by touching them. Its purpose had been for soldiers to communicate silently at night, but since it did not succeed as a military tool, Barbier thought the system might be useful for blind individuals.

It was quite complex soldiers had had difficulty learning it and it was based on sounds rather than letters. Braille spent three years—from ages 12 to 15—developing a much simpler system. His system had only six dots — three dots lined up in each of two columns. He assigned different combinations of dots to different letters and punctuation marks, with a total of 64 symbols. He became an apprentice teacher at the National Institute for Blind Youth when he was 19, and then a teacher when he was In , the school published the first book in braille.

Nonetheless, by , when tuberculosis forced Louis Braille to retire from teaching, his six-dot method was well on its way to widespread acceptance. We strive for accuracy and fairness. However, it was thought that it might be useful for the blind, which led Dr. Pignier to invite Barbier to come demonstrate it. Further, this large dot matrix made it so unless you had very large fingertips, you couldn't feel all the dots in a single matrix without moving your finger. Still, Braille was inspired and, as a young teenager, he began experimenting.

He took a piece of paper, a slate, and a stylus, punching holes and attempting to find something that worked. In , Braille was just barely sixteen, but he thought he had hit upon something that was functional and superior to the existing embossed letter system. His original code consisted of six dots arranged in two parallel rows, each set of rows representing a letter. This configuration was simpler than Barbier's system, but still versatile enough to allow for up to 64 variations, enough for all the letters of the alphabet and punctuation.

It was also easily adapted to languages other than French. Most importantly, rather than needing to trace out a whole letter, it was much easier to feel the configuration of dots, making reading for the blind significantly faster and easier. Pignier was pleased with Braille's work and encouraged his students to use Braille's new system.

Unfortunately when Dr.