18 Facts About Braille

Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision.

Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident.

Braille published his system, which subsequently included musical notation, in 1829.

Braille was based on a tactile code, now known as night writing, developed by Charles Barbier.

Braille's solution was to use 6-dot cells and to assign a specific pattern to each letter of the alphabet.

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At first, Braille was a one-to-one transliteration of the French alphabet, but soon various abbreviations and even logograms were developed, creating a system much more like shorthand.

Blind readers, Braille is an independent writing system, rather than a code of printed orthography.

Braille assignments have been created for mathematical and musical notation.

For example, French Braille uses for its question mark and swaps the quotation marks and parentheses; it uses the period () for the decimal point, as in print, and the decimal point () to mark capitalization.

Braille contractions are words and affixes that are shortened so that they take up fewer cells.

Braille writing machine is a typewriter with six keys that allows the user to write braille on a regular hard copy page.

Early Braille education is crucial to literacy for a blind or low-vision child.

Braille characters are much larger than their printed equivalents, and the standard 11" by 11.

System of contractions in English Braille begins with a set of 23 words contracted to single characters.

Since Braille is one of the few writing systems where tactile perception is used, as opposed to visual perception, a braille reader must develop new skills.

One skill important for Braille readers is the ability to create smooth and even pressures when running one's fingers along the words.

Braille is read by people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision, and by both those born with a visual impairment and those who experience sight loss later in life.

Braille set was added to the Unicode Standard in version 3.