What does braille do

Braille grades The two grades of braille are: Grade 1 — the braille alphabet, numbers and punctuation. This is equivalent to the print alphabet. People learning braille usually start with Grade 1. However, this form takes up a lot of space, which makes Grade 1 braille books much bulkier than print books. Grade 2 — braille that, in addition to the alphabet, uses abbreviations and contractions similar to that of shorthand.

Grade 2 braille is used for more complicated texts, such as novels and large documents, because it takes up less space. The shorter words mean less finger travel across a line and a faster reading speed. Grade 2 is the most popular form of braille. History of braille The inventor of braille was Louis Braille, born in in France.

Complications including infection meant that he was blind in both eyes by five years of age. He attended the School for the Blind in Paris, but the cumbersome raised tactile print letters used for reading and the fact that there was no way of writing for blind people was a constant source of frustration. His braille writing system was not widely accepted by the authorities until after his death. At first, braille was written by hand, using a stylus to punch the dots into the paper.

Since the dots were pushed into the back of the paper, writing had to be done backwards, or from right to left. Modern braille technology The Perkins Brailler is a kind of typewriter that is commonly used throughout the world to write braille.

It has six keys representing each one of the six braille dots. To write a letter, the correct combination of keys has to be pressed simultaneously.

As a military veteran, Barbier saw several soldiers killed because they used lamps after dark to read combat messages. As a result of the light shining from the lamps, enemy combatants knew where the French soldiers were and inevitably led to the loss of many men.

Each dot or combination of dots within the cell represented a letter or a phonetic sound. The problem with the military code was that the human fingertip could not feel all the dots with one touch. Louis Braille was born in the village of Coupvray, France on January 4, One year earlier he was enrolled at the National Institute of the Blind in Paris.

He spent the better part of the next nine years developing and refining the system of raised dots that has come to be known by his name, Braille. This crucial improvement meant that a fingertip could encompass the entire cell unit with one impression and move rapidly from one cell to the next. Here are ten facts about braille to help you learn more about this year-old code which is still a key to literacy and independence for thousands of blind and visually impaired people around the world today.

Before he developed his revolutionary code, various systems mostly using raised print letters were used to help blind people read. Braille is not a language. It is a tactile code enabling blind and visually impaired people to read and write by touch, with various combinations of raised dots representing the alphabet, words, punctuation and numbers.

There are braille codes for the vast majority of languages — some symbols have different meanings for aspects such as accented letters, depending on the language. In its simplest form one letter is represented by one symbol, however contracted braille provides some shortening. As a tactile code, it will only be of use if you can read and write it via touch if sight is lost completely or reading large print is no longer possible.

Braille is a system that uses combinations of raised dots to spell letters and numbers. So you can write in any language using braille! Braille actually started out as a secret code used by soldiers in France in the early s so they could communicate quietly at night without using light.

Louis figured out how to make the night writing simpler, and by the time he was 15, he had invented a whole new way to read and write! He even published the very first braille book in , when he was only 20 years old. Photo credit: mag on Visualhunt.