How it all started
In 1819, Louis Braille attended the Royal Institute for Young Blind in Paris, called the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles as a student. He also later went on to teach at the school. He himself became blind in his childhood. (Albrecht).
The Haüy system is what allowed Louis Braille to gain his first tactile literacy skills (Cox, 5:22), However this system had many flaws and did not allow students to write by themselves freely or easily. |
At the age of sixteen, Louis invented Braille using the 12-raised dot code invented by Charles Barbier. Barbier's code was initially created for Napoleon’s army to communicate at night in silence. (Bar-Cohen). This code is also known as 'Night Writing'.
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The power behind Braille |
A language driven by the need for independence |
Blind people claimed literacy (Cox, 10:48). At the time that Louis Braille invented Braille, the sighted people who ran the school for the Blind in Paris hated the coded system. This hatred came partly out of the reality of these educators not learning Braille, when they very easily could have. A sighted person can learn to decode Braille by sight without needing to work on their finger sensitivity skills. This led to students having the ability to write and talk to their peers, without the teachers knowing what they are saying. This is a prime example of kids taking the power from their teachers and the teachers wanting to hold on to that power, instead of pushing for their blind students' independence and literacy (Cox, 9:45).
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Before Braille, if a Blind or visually impaired person wanted to have something written for themselves, they'd have to have someone else write it and then they'd have to get the writing embossed in the Roman Alphabet. This is referred to as the Haüy system, explained above (Cox, 5:22). People would also have to have sighted people read to them, and if they would read by themselves it would be with the very difficult system of embossed Roman letters. This made blind and visually impaired people dependent on sighted people.
Because of the systems in place before Braille was invented, blind children often did not attend school and the idea of them achieving literacy wasn't thought possible (Cox, 4:47). Why would you tell someone to learn through hearing if that makes them dependent on other people to gain their access? Braille provides blind and visually impaired people access to reading and writing, as well as the general ability to be independent just as print does for sighted people even today.
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