Today Is January 4

Today is World Braille Day, an international day that raises awareness of the importance of Braille for approximately 1.3 billion people living with some form of distance or near vision impairment.

Braille was invented by Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight at the age of three. At a school for blind boys, Louis came across books whose words consisted of raised letters of the alphabet; the drawback was, they took a long time to decipher. In 1821 an artillery captain, Charles Barbier, visited the school, visited the school, bringing a 12-dot code he'd devised to help Napoleon’s soldiers communicate at night without light. The captain was reluctant to accept suggestions from a boy, so Louis began to experiment at night. Using an awl, he reduced the number of dots from 12 to 6 which, arranged in different positions, represented the letters of the alphabet, thus enabling the blind to both read and write.

The date for the event was chosen by the United Nations General Assembly via a proclamation in November 2018, and marks the birthday of Louis Braille. The first World Braille Day was celebrated on January 4, 2019.

Around the world, 39 million people are blind, and another 253 million have some sort of vision impairment. For them, Braille provides a tactical representation of alphabetic and numerical symbols so blind and partially-sighted people are able to read the same books and periodicals printed as are available in standard text form.