Louis was born a seeing child in 1809 to a family in Coupvray, France. His father had a workshop where he made saddles and harnesses. One day when he was 3 years old, Louis was playing in his father’s workshop and an accident occurred with an awl. He was blinded in one eye. Shortly afterwards, infection set in which dimmed his vision in his other eye. Soon he was completely and permanently blind.

When he was a little older, Louis went to the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children) in Paris. As a bright, curious child, he did well but the lack of reading materials was a continual frustration. The few books printed for the blind used embossed Roman letters. The children were taught to read and write using Charles Barbier’s “Night Writing” system. Barbier, a French military officer, had developed this method to communicate with soldiers in the trenches, using a 12-dot grid, with each pattern representing a phonetic sound. It was a brilliant idea for the military’s purposes, but not a good system for blind people. It was imprecise, had no punctuation, and was difficult to learn.

Louis converted his frustration to action. He created his own system for reading and writing, using a simplified 6-dot system in 1824, which immediately caught on in his school and throughout Paris.

At age 15, Louis Braille had pried open a door that was closed to blind people since the beginning of time. He put the ability to read and write within reach for millions of blind people. 

Louis never knew how impactful his system was destined to become, but he may have had an inkling. When he passed away from tuberculosis in 1852, Louis’ system had spread beyond France and was transforming the lives of blind people in other countries. In 1878, it was adopted as the international system for blind writing. (Mary Ingalls was an early American student. She entered Iowa College for the Blind in 1881.)

Braille is still used today. The alphabet was standardized in 1950 and, in 2005, UNESCO recognized the system 15-year-old Louis created as a “vital language of communication, as legitimate as all other languages in the world.” The best guess estimate I found is that approximately 50 million people have learned braille since it was introduced.

Louis Braille adapted his system for music. I love American roots music and many of the Delta bluesmen were blind. These men likely had no opportunity to learn braille, but lots of other blind musicians have, including the Italian tenor Andrea Boccelli and the American singer and songwriter Ray Charles.  This braille edition of Reader’s Digest belonged to Ray Charles.

music.si.edu

Without Louis Braille, could we have enjoyed the contributions of so many blind musicians and writers?