World Braille Day: What is braille? And how was the system of writing invented?

These symbols are constructed within fixed units of space known as braille cells — a full braille cell comprises the space for six raised dots arranged parallely in two columns of three. This allows for a total of 64 possible combinations of dots and empty spaces in a cell, meaning that one can denote as many as 64 unique symbols using braille.

A slate and a stylus used to write braille. (Wikimedia Commons)

Of course, a lot more than 64 symbols are at play, if one considers all the languages in the world. This is why different languages and countries have their own braille codes. There are even some eight-dot versions of braille which allow for 255 possible symbols to be denoted.

India, for instance, developed the Bharati Braille script in the 1950s to unify as many as 11 braille scripts in use for different languages in pre-Independence India.

How is braille written?

Like any other script, braille can be written using paper and pencil/pen, printed, or written on a braille writer.

The first requires the use of a slate and a stylus. A braille slate is a writing guide with a template of evenly spaced depressions for braille dots. A stylus is used to create indentations in the template and form braille characters. This leads to there being bulges on the paper on its reverse side, which forms the dots which can then be read via touch.

A braillewriter is the typewriter-equivalent for writing braille. It has only six keys, a space bar, a line spacer, and a backspace. The six main keys are numbered to correspond with the six dots of a braille cell. The person typing pushes a combination of these six keys at the same time to produce a symbol in braille.

With developments in technology, new portable devices have come up which allow users to read and write in braille using verbal or tactile cues, and produce hardcopies using braille-embossers (like a printer for braille). There are also specific keyboards which the visually impaired can use, which allow them to type using standard alphabets, and then translate this into braille for printed hard copies.

How was braille invented?

The history of braille can be traced back to early 19th century France. A certain Charles Barbier, a former artillery captain who was interested in coding and writing systems, was at the heart of braille’s early development.

As the story goes, Barbier came up with a system of “night writing” so that soldiers need not turn on lamps to write letters or read messages at night, which could give away their position and lead to costly losses. Barbier’s system was based on 12-dots whose combinations represented different phonetic sounds.

Now, for human fingers, it is not easy to read all 12 dots at once, making this system rather tedious. Enter Louis Braille. Born in 1809 near Paris, Braille had gone blind at the age of only three after an unfortunate accident. Nonetheless, he excelled in multiple areas including music and academics.

Louis Braille (1809-52) invented the system of writing used today by the visually impaired around the world. (Wikimedia Commons)

At the age of just 15, he figured out an adaptation of Barbier’s “night writing”, which he changed to a six-dot system and initially adapted for musical notation. This system would go through multiple refinements until 1837, when Braille published a three-volume braille edition of a popular history textbook. Considered to be the first work in the system that would later be termed “braille”, the textbook’s success propelled Braille’s invention to global fame.

Initially, braille was a one-to-one transliteration of the French alphabet but over time, various contractions and further refinements took place as braille began to be adapted to languages around the globe. The latest World Braille Usage (published in 2013), a compilation of braille codes for languages around the world, contains braille codes for more than 133 languages.