Today is the birthday of Louis Braille, born in Coupvray, France (1809). He was blinded in his fathers harness shop when he was three years old. His parents tried their best to give him a normal life; even without his eyesight, he was the best student in his school, and eventually went on to become a famous organist and cellist. At the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, he adapted an idea used in the French army to send messages that could be read in the dark, simplifying it by encoding individual letters rather than sounds. He decided that each letter would be represented by a different arrangement of six dots packed close enough that each letter could be read by a single fingertip, and he perfected his method by the time he was 15. Today, reading and writing of braille is something of a dying art. There are now far more audio versions of books than there are books printed in braille, and there are software programs to convert written text into audio. Today only about 10 percent of blind children in this country learn to read braille. Louis Braille said: Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we [the blind] are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals — and communication is the way this can be brought about. ~ The Writers Almanac
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 14:16:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015