USING BRAILLE AS COMMUNICATION

Using Braille as Communication

Using Braille as Communication

Introduction

Braille, designed by Louis Braille, is a unique system of reading and writing that aids the blind in communication. In the Braille system, each letter is made up of six possible dot positions, arranged in a grid of two columns and three rows. The positions are numbered 1, 2, and 3 from top to bottom in the first column, and 4, 5, 6 from top to bottom in the second. For each letter, a specific subset of the dots is raised, creating a unique character that the reader can sense with his fingertips. A number of abbreviations (or "contractions") exist to enable the Braille reader to move quickly through the words. Braille can be produced on a special typewriter or with a Braille embosser attached to a computer.

Discussion

Louis Braille, a French teacher and inventor of the Blind Braille, was born on 4th of January 1809 in Couvre, a small village east of Paris. At the age of three years, Louis fell and injured one eye. His eye got infected and the infection spread to the other eye making Louis completely blind. Louis first went to the village school for blinds founded in 1784 by Valentin Haüy Institute in Paris when he was 10 years old. There were books that could be read by moving fingers over the embossed letters, but the blinds were still deprived of any ways of writing something (Bainbridge, 2008).

Between the age of 14th and 16, Louis developed a simple 6-point system for reading and writing, which depicted the alphabet. The basic form of this system could be detected with a button unit. Louis became a teacher and stayed at the Paris Institute for the Blind. Louis died on 6 January 1852 at the age of 43. He was a victim of tuberculosis, which had plagued him for 17 years. All his life he fought for the use of his work. In 1850 he was recognized by the pedagogical academy in France. Today it is used worldwide (Freedman, 1997).

Writing Systems before the Braille

Other systems, which had been known since the 16th century, made use of the ordinary shapes of letters. These were sometimes made of lead or wood, or cut out of cardboard or outlined in pins stuck in cushions (Freedman, 1997). One development on these lines was embossing—making indentations of ordinary letters on the back of a piece ...