BA celebrates World Braille Day
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Alexandria, 27 December 2005— For the first time in Egypt, the Taha Hussein Library at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is celebrating the World Braille Day, 4 January, honoring Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille who was born on 4 January 1809.
The celebration comprises a display of the equipment and tools used by Braille users, including: a Perkins Braille typewriter, a Braille display, a Braille printer, an Everest Braille Printer, and "the book maker". The event also includes workshops on how to write names in Braille, and “How the blind read: watch and learn”. The library will also display the books that were transformed to the Braille language for visitor to explore.
The World Braille Day is a tribute to the genius of Louis Braille, who, almost 200 years ago, revolutionized the lives of blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind people, with his invention of a simple yet sophisticated system of six raised dots. Used in various combinations, the six dots can be used to form letters of the alphabet, musical notations, chemistry symbols, numbers, and punctuation.
Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray, France. He got blind when he was three. He was enrolled in a regular school where he learned by listening and excelled in his studies. By the age of 10, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. There he learned to read letters that were raised on a page. Since these letters were made by pressing shaped copper wire onto a page, it was impossible for people who were blind to write anything for themselves.
At the Institution, Louis was first introduced to a coded system of raised letters, "Night Writing", invented by a French army captain, Charles Barbier de la Serre. Night writing was designed for soldiers to communicate at night without speaking. In his system, a series of 12 raised dots were used to represent sounds that, when combined, would form words. It proved to be too complicated, and the army eventually rejected it.
Louis developed the Braille system by the time he was 15, based on Night Writing, but using 6 dots to represent the standard alphabet, instead of 12 dots.
The Braille language was used in America in 1860 and in England in 1869. the Braille language was translated into Arabic by Mohamed El Ansy in the mid 19th century.