Word of the Day: April 24, 2009 ~ braille

braille (breyl) - noun

Braille is "a system of writing or printing, devised by Louis Braille for use by the blind, in which combinations of tangible dots or points are used to represent letters, characters, etc., that are read by touch."

In the year 1812, a little French boy, Louis Braille, was blinded. He learned his alphabet at a school for the blind by feeling twigs that were fashioned in the shape of letters, but he was hungry for knowledge and impatient with this awkward technique. One day when he was older, he heard of a French Army captain who had devised a system of raised dots and dashes by which his orders could be read by the fingers in the dark - simple symbols such as one dot for advance, two for retreat.  It was from this beginning that Louis Braille developed what is now known as the Braille system of printing for the blind. He published treatises on his system in 1829 and 1837.

Photo by centralasian

Comments

[sarah myers]

YEY!! My momma will be happy to hear about this one :-)

[Donna W. Hill]

America is in the midst of a Braille literacy crisis. Only 10% of America's blind kids (down from 50% in the '60s) are taught to read & write Braille, still the only tool offering true literacy to blind people on a par with print. It affects all of us , because it results in lower employment of blind adults & the need for tax-payer support of intelligent and willing people. Seventy percent of working-age, blind adults are unemployed. Of the thirty percent who work, ninety percent read Braille.

Congress recognized this problem and authorized the minting of the Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar. The coin supports the Braille Readers are Leaders" campaign of the National Federation of the Blind, which seeks to double the number of blind kids learning Braille by 2015.

Unfortunately, there have only been a handful of articles nationwide about this, and sales are lagging – only 42,000 of the 400,000 produced. Compare this to the Abraham Lincoln coin also minted this year which has long since sold out all 450,000 produced.

Please, help us get the word out.

Braille Readers are Leaders: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Braille_Initiative.asp

Visit the US Mint: http://www.usmint.gov

[J. Frcho]

There are a number of different versions of Braille Code:

Grade 1: consists of the 26 standard letters of the alphabet and punctuation. It is only used by people who just started Reading Braille.

Grade 2: consists of the 26 standard letters of the alphabet, punctuation and contractions. The contractions are employed to save space because a Braille page cannot fit as much text as a standard printed page. Books, signs in public places, menus, and most other Braille materials are written in Grade 2 Braille.

Grade 3: is used only in personal letters, diaries, and notes. It is a kind of shorthand, with entire words shortened to a few letters.

Braille has been adapted to write many different languages and is also used for musical and mathematical notation.

For more information on Braille code and to see visual examples, please visit our Braille Alphabet page here: http://www.brailleworks.com/Resources/BrailleAlphabet.aspx