How well do you know Louis Braille?

4^th January is World Braille Day, an annual holiday celebrated to honour Louis Braille, the creator of Braille, which is widely used by people who are visually impaired across the world. Braille was born on 4^th January 1809 and became blind at the age of 3 following an accident, here’s a brief look at his life and successes.

Louis Braille was born in France on the outskirts of Paris, the youngest of four children to a relatively wealthy family. His father had a successful business making leather and equine equipment. The family lived on a vineyard and had around 3 hectacres of land!

All the children began playing and learning about the equipment their father used from a young age, so it wasn’t unusual for Louis, even as a baby to be hanging around in the workshop. When he was three, he was playing with some of the tools, accidentally stabbing himself in the eye. He was seen by a local doctor and arranged to see a surgeon in Paris the following day but there wasn’t much that could be done to help. After suffering with infections, he also lost sight in the other eye and by five was declared completely blind. According to reports, because of his young age, he didn’t understand why he could no longer see. His parents though, unlike others of the time, made efforts to raise him in as normal a fashion as possible. His father would create canes for him and taught him how to navigate the house and the wider area, allowing him to become comfortable with his disability. Throughout his childhood, Braille was described as being bright and creative and his teachers and local priests were keen to help him prosper.

He was so bright that he was admitted to one of the first schools for blind children in the world. Now known as the National Institute for Blind Youth, the school was founded by Valentin Haüy, who created a system, known as Haüy, to teach the children to read. The school was located in Paris, so Braille left home for the city. Though Haüy was not blind himself, he devoted his life to helping those who were visually impaired. He designed and manufactured his own books, using heavy embossed paper with the words raised, so that the children could run their fingers over them to read. Braille was inspired by this system but found that it only allowed for the most basic of information. The raised letters were also difficult to make, so it didn’t allow the children to write. Braille’s father created an alphabet made out of bits of leather, which allowed him to trace the outlines to send letters home but the process was slow.

While at the school, Braille did well, he read the books provided to him repeatedly and enjoyed his lessons.  In his teens, he learned a new system that had been introduced Charles Barbier. Barbier had contacted the school with his system as he thought it would be helpful for those with visual impairments. Braille would base his own system on this one. He worked tirelessly on his own ideas and it was largely completed by the time he was 15.

Once he had completed his education, his teachers asked him to stay on as a member of staff and he eventually became a professor there. For much of his life, he taught at the Institute where he taught history, geometry and algebra. During this time he also became an accomplished cellist and organist, having a natural ear for music. He would in time go on to play the organ in churches across France, becoming the chief organist at two of Paris’ influential churches.

Braille’s communication system comprised of uniform columns of each letter. Originally it used both dots and dashes, but he dropped the dashes later on. He would later adapt it to include musical notation. The first books printed in Braille were done so using the same system Haüy had used during his publications. Sadly, Braille would not live to see his invention being used at the Institute, he was plagued with health problems that forced him to retire by the age of 40, he would die just three years later of suspected tuberculosis. The school would introduce his system shortly after this and it would be in the almost world-wide use by the 1930s.

Today, Braille’s childhood home is a listed building and is where you can find the Louis Braille Museum. His home town also features a statue of him in a square which has been named for him. Braille as we know it today hasn’t changed much from the original design. It consists of cells made up of 6 dots, arranged in a grid which then represent a letter or symbol and has been adapted into a host of languages and even into computer codes.

How much did you know about Louis Braille?