World Braille Day celebrates the birth of Louis Braille, inventor of the reading and writing system used by millions of blind and partially sighted people all over the globe. World Braille Day is an international day on January 4 that celebrates awareness of the importance of braille as a means of communication in the full realization of the human rights for blind and visually impaired people. The date for the event was chosen by the United Nations General Assembly via a proclamation in November 2018, and the first World Braille Day was celebrated on January 4, 2019.
Louis Braille, the inventor of braille, was born in France on January 4, 1809. Blinded in both eyes in an accident as a child, Braille nevertheless managed to master his disability while still a child. Despite not being able to see at all, he excelled in his education and received scholarship to France’s Royal Institute for Blind Youth. During his studies, inspired by the military cryptography of Charles Barbier of the French Army, he developed a system of tactile code that could allow the blind to read and write quickly and efficiently. In 1829, he published his first book about the system he had created, called ‘Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them’.
The braille system works by representing the alphabet letters (and numbers) in a series of 6 dots paired up in 3 rows. The simplicity of his idea allowed books to start being produced on a large scale in a format that thousands of blind people can read by running their fingertips over the dots.
Interesting, ‘Annie,’ the world’s first self-learning device for teaching Braille to visually impaired kids was founded by BITS Pilani Goa Campus alumni Sanskriti Dawle, Aman Srivastava, Saif Shaikh, and Dilip Ramesh. The Thinkerbell Labs, a BITS Pilani Goa startup uses technology to help visually impaired kids self-learn their curriculum in Braille and has raised Rs 1.05 crore on Sharktank India. The startup’s proprietary device Annie helps students learn, read, and type braille, making it easier for them to write examinations and complete assignments.
Purple Ambassador Mahadev Sawant is a person with low vision. He began his career as a computer teacher and currently, he is working as a lower division clerk at Goa Medical College. He has been appointed to the State Advisory Board under the rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. He served on the State Advisory Committee for the office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Government of Goa. In 2018, he was awarded best employee with disability (visual impairment) by the Social Welfare Department, Government of Goa. He has also been awarded the best teacher award by the Goa State Branch of the National Association for the Blind (NAB) in 2017.
“I learnt braille at the National Association for the Blind where I was trained by late Leena Prabhu, a senior teacher at National Association for the Blind, Goa State Branch, who passed away in November. I was also taught by Josephine D’Souza, who is still teaching students at NAB. I was a computer teacher at the NAB for ten years,” says Mahadev Sawant.
“We are now working on giving those visiting Goa for the AccessIndia all the facilities. The AccessIndia Convention will be held at Clube Tennis de Gaspar Dias, Miramar on January 5 from 10 am to 5 pm. There will be 35 speakers from all over India who will be highlighting different topics on technology, education and queries regarding blindness. We have already received 75 participants from Goa and we are expecting many more on the day of the event,” says Mahadev. AccessIndia is a community driven initiative, which empowers its members with information, solutions, organizes and provides directions to all issues concerning the disabled.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) report cites there are 285 million visually impaired people all over the world. However, the Braille literacy rates across the globe are abysmal with less than 1 percent in India. India has the largest number of visually impaired people in the world.
Jospehine D’Souza has been teaching Braille at NAB, the only institute in Goa to learn Braille. Living with her brother in Gujarat, she returned to Goa when he was posted here. She turned blind at the age of 35 years and she approached Leena Prabhu at NAB to learn braille. “I live in Margao and I was not used to travelling with a cane. I requested my brother to take a day’s leave so we could visit NAB. I visited NAB where late Leena explained the concept of braille using six pebbles from the garden. She told me that she could teach me from home and I could call her anytime for clarifications. She also informed me to take a rehabilitation course in Mumbai which I did and further went on to do a computer course in Pune. I learnt braille in A, the basic course and B, which is a little advanced with different signs for words. I have been teaching braille for the past 12 years at NAB,” says Josephine, who know calls NAB her home.
Josephine explains that children as young as six years can learn braille. “It depends on the age of the students and their sense of touch. The dots are very fine and close to each other. We start by showing them how to feel the embossed dots and lines. Some students join at a later age but they have to start from the beginning. The language is based on the position of the six dots in two columns and three rows, which forms the alphabets,”
says Josephine.
Do the children show interest in learning braille? “Some are enthusiastic but some who are partially blind will still carry to go very close to the book to read. One parent requested me to teach their son to read braille as they were travelling. When he came back to class he was overjoyed to tell that he could read his train seat in braille. Now with the braille embosser, we don’t have to manually type on the computer. As the script is now unified English braille, we only have to give a command to emboss. I just typed pamphlets for the Purple fest and printed 50 copies in braille for participants who would like to read the full timetable of the festival,” says Jospehine.