Visually impaired or completely blind people are deprived of many of the joys of life. How could they, for example, perceive printed information? There are special tools that help those who have lost their eyesight to read and even write. One of these tools is the so-called Braille.
Embossed Braille
Braille is a combination of dots designed for reading and writing by those who are unable to perceive information through a visual analyzer. The relief-point font is based on combinations of several points that form a certain sign.
A text executed in this way can be relatively easily recognized by touch, if, of course, a person is sufficiently prepared.
This system of reading and writing was invented by the Frenchman Louis Braille, who lived in the first half of the 19th century. By means of the Braille font, you can reproduce not only the alphabet, but also numbers, note signs, as well as any other symbols, each of which corresponds to various combinations of convex dots located in special cells.
How Braille Was Created
The story goes that Braille himself accidentally injured his eye with a knife during his childhood, after which he became blind. At the age of ten, the boy entered a school for the blind, located in Paris. There they taught to read from the books of the so-called Howie system, in which the student had to examine by touch each convex letter. It was not an easy task, as it took several seconds to feel one letter. When the student reached the end of the line, he could well forget the letters that came at the very beginning.
Braille, who had experienced the imperfection of the existing teaching system, decided to find another way to read, which would be simpler and faster.
For the basis of his invention, Braille took the army code, which was widely used by the military to deliver reports. So that the message could be read at night, when even the light of a match could unmask the position, the gunners used sheets of cardboard with holes punched into them. It was much easier to read such inscriptions than those volumetric letters that were contained in huge textbooks for the blind.
Based on this military method of writing, Louis Braille created a relief-point system. It made it possible to write characters for a wide variety of purposes. Over the years, Braille has connected individual combinations of dots into cells, which consisted of a pair of vertical rows - three characters in each of them. It was very easy to master the Braille system, and it was relatively easy for the blind to use it in practice.
But the inventor was disappointed. When he offered his system of reading and writing to specialists from one of the institutes, it was categorically rejected. The argument was that this font would not be user-friendly for teachers. Braille had to independently implement the system he had developed. It was only when the font gained wide popularity among the blind and visually impaired that specialists were seriously interested in it.
