History of Braille
Braille was developed by Frenchman named Louis Braille in 1824.
What is Braille
Braille is a tactile method of reading, which means reading by touch.
Braille is made up of six dots, which is called a Braille cell. A Braille cell has two columns of three dots: Dots 1,2,3 on the left side of the cell and dots 4,5,6 on the right side of the cell.
All six dots are raised in Braille so the dots can be felt by someone’s fingers. Using different combinations of these dots makes up letters and numbers.
For Example:
Combinations of the top four dots are used to make up the letters A through J.
The letter A is dot 1.
B is dots 1 and 2.
C is dots 1 and 4.
D is dots 1, 4 and 5.
E is dots 1 and 5.
F is dots 1, 2 and 4.
G is dots 1, 2, 4 and 5.
H is dots 1, 2 and 5.
I is dots 2 and 4.
J is dots 2, 4 and 5
When you add the dot 3 to these 10 letters you get K through T.
When you add dot 6 to letters K-O you get letters U, V, X, Y, Z
You might notice that I left out the letter W. This is because the letter W is not used in the French language, and (did you remember?) Louis Braille was French. So, in English we use dots 2, 4, 5 and 6 for the letter W.
This is the basics of Grade 1 Braille.
There are two sizes of Braille: Standard and Jumbo. With Jumbo, the spacing and dot size is a little bigger for people with Neuropathy in their fingers.
When you are reading or writing Braille you can expect a braille character to take up twice the character space of a print character. Because of this, Grade 2 was born. By using the same letters I described above and adding more letters together, or adding dots before the letter, you can make what are called word contractions.
For Example:
The letter K by its self is the word knowledge.
The letters TGR is the word together.
A dot 5 before the letter O becomes one.
This is a small example of Grade 2 Braille. There are hundreds of combinations that make up Grade 2 Braille. By the way, the word Braille is written BRL.
Now comes the big question: is Braille still used today?
The easy answer is yes and no.
Due to the amazing technology that we have access to today, Braille is not used as much as it was in the past. For example, individuals with low vision can now read print easier using video cameras/CCTVs that magnify the letters. Individuals who are blind can use computers with speech. There are some professions that still use Braille a lot, such as Engineers, Lawyers, and Scientists. People in these professions often feel that they get a better visual image in their mind with Braille that they don’t get by just using speech output.
