People across the globe today commemorated the birth anniversary of French educator Louis Braille, the inventor of the Braille system of reading and writing for the visually challenged in 1825. Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in the French town of Coupvray.
Braille’s birthday has been observed as Braille Day since 2019 after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) picked the date in 2018 to raise awareness of the importance of Braille as a means of communication “in the full realization of the human rights for blind and partially sighted people.”
The system is a tactile method of writing involving a script with raised dots that can be read with the fingers by people who are visually impaired.
Braille met with an accident at the age of 3, with a stitching awl in his father’s harness-making shop. This caused him to go blind in one eye. While working in his father’s shop, he accidentally stabbed himself in another eye while trying to make holes in a piece of leather. This resulted in total blindness.
The day has special importance to India, which in accordance with the global strive towards bringing visually challenged people to the front of the general community, took various steps including the introduction of Braille voter slip for visually impaired voters in 2019.
