How to write in Braille
We had already covered, in an article on this blog, how the visually impaired can benefit from the eBook for reading and the development for the blind of the eBraille project, which would be a digital alternative to the paper Braille version.
Braille is in fact still the most widely used method of enabling reading and writing to the approximately 285 million visually impaired people worldwide. Why ‘still’? Despite what you might think, this code is over 200 years old and has not changed much since its birth.
How Braille was born
Its inventor in the early 19th century was Frenchman Louis Braille, who lost sight in both eyes following an accident in his father’s workshop. At the age of 10, he learned to read at the Institute for the Young Blind in Paris using the method then in vogue. Valentin Haüy, a calligrapher, had in fact invented a rather efficient system of movable relief printing characters in the previous century.
In 1821, however, the military man Charles Barbier de la Serre taught young Louis another method. The armed forces used it for sending messages at night and it was based on twelve points for writing embossed messages. At only 15 years old, after that inspiring encounter, Braille devised the bar that bears his name. The code was based on the combination of six raised, tactile dots corresponding to the letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks. The combination was later extended to mathematics and musical notes, while 2 dots were added in the field of computer science. Today, 800 languages and dialects use Braille as a communication system between blind people.
The composition of Braille
The first Braille code book did not see the light of day until 1827. This was because there was an obvious difficulty of learning and mastering it with confidence, especially with regard to writing.
The alphabetic code at the basis of Braille is in fact composed of 6 dots arranged within a rectangular shape, which ideally corresponds to that of the fingertip of the index finger. The rectangular shape contains two vertical lines of three dots each. To help our imagination, we can think of an egg carton placed vertically. The dot combinations result in a total of 64, divided into five sets of 10 dots each and 13 free dots. Simplifying, the top four dots are used to make up the first ten letters of the alphabet (from A to J, to which the numbers 1 to 0 correspond). The next ten letters are joined by the bottom left dot (up to T) and the following letters by both bottom dots. The same logic also applies to punctuation.
How to write in Braille
The rule is that Braille should be traced on the opposite side of the page, reversing the character arrangement. This is because, if one thinks of engraving the code with an awl and tablet, the raised part is precisely that opposite the hole, which is therefore read from left to right once the sheet is turned over.
Today, fortunately, there are special computer keyboards that reproduce the dot combination in the keys, simplifying the work of writing text by no small margin. For those who prefer to use paper, however, there is a popular solution: the dactyl-braille. It is to all intents and purposes a typewriter, but with only seven keys, which correspond to the 6 dots of the Braille bar plus a blank space. Here, too, good dexterity is required: to form a letter, the keys that form the dots must be pressed simultaneously.
Braille libraries
Since 1928, the main Italian library serving the blind has been the ONLUS ‘Regina Margherita’, which has been based in Monza since the late 1990s and owns the most important Italophone collection of Braille works.
In 1948, in order to facilitate access to culture for blind and visually impaired people in Italian-speaking Switzerland, the Unitas Braille and Talking Book Library was founded in Tenero. It is possible to consult 700 volumes in Braille script, 800 in large print and over 8,000 books recorded on audio media. Everyone can also download eBooks in ePub format, thanks to a specific application. The library’s users include not only the blind and visually impaired, but also those who have difficulty reading in some way, including people with specific learning disorders.
If you would like to learn more about this subject, we recommend you refer to this interesting booklet made available by UNITAS itself, which explains in detail the ordering of the various points in the Braille system and the fields of application most commonly used today.
