Louis Braille & National Braille Literacy Month

About National Braille Literacy Month

When: The month of January

Why: To honor Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille, and promote braille literacy.

How to Celebrate (links are to external websites)

Learn about Braille and its significance on the National Braille Press website at https://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/about/aboutbraille/whoislouis.html
Try learning braille yourself with American Printing House's Braille Brain, available at their website https://www.aph.org/product/braille-brain/
Request a free braille or audiobook from the Library of Congress's National Library Service website at https://www.loc.gov/nls/thatallmayread/
Request up to five books a month in hardcopy braille through the Library of Congress' Braille-on-Demand program. Learn more about this program at the Library of Congress website found here https://www.loc.gov/nls/services-and-resources/braille-on-demand/
Visit The Andrew Heiskell Library at 40 W 20th St, New York, New York 10011-4211. Learn more about the library on their website at https://www.nypl.org/locations/heiskell
Explore The Louis Braille Museum, honoring his life's work and contributions to society by following this link https://museelouisbraille.com/en and take a virtual visit of the museum's Garden of the Five Senses here: https://museelouisbraille.com/en/jardin-des-5-sens.

Interesting Facts about Braille (links are to external websites)

What it is: A tactile system of raised dots representing letters, numbers, punctuation, and symbols.
Inventor: Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray, France, and invented Braille while he was a student at Paris' National Institute for Blind Youth in 1824. Read more about his life by visiting The Paths to Literacy website here https://www.pathstoliteracy.org/dots-families-story-louis-braille/#
Languages: Braille can be read and written in many languages.

Key Dates

World Braille Day: Celebrated internationally on January 4th.
National Braille Week: Typically observed in the second week of October.

Music Braille Code Braille (links are to an external websites)

The Braille Authority of North America (BANA) published a new Music Braille Code in 2015. This completely revised publication is available for free download in two electronic versions (PDF and BRF) on BANA's website here: https://www.brailleauthority.org/music/music.html.

Hardcopy versions are also produced and sold by the American Printing House for the Blind on their website at https://www.aph.org/product/music-braille-code-2015-print/.

Additional Resources (links are to external websites)

British Braille Timeline

1861 - Braille was introduced to Britain.

1876 - A French-based system with a few hundred English contractions and abbreviations was adopted as the predominant script in Great Britain.

1878 - The ideal of basing all braille alphabets of the world on the original French alphabetic order was accepted by Britain, Germany, and Egypt.

1902 - Contractions and abbreviations proved unsatisfactory, and the Grade 2 system, called Revised Braille, was adopted in the British Commonwealth.

1902 - 1917 - Schools for the blind in the United States continue to use American Modified Braille or New York Point.

1918 - Schools for the blind in the United States commit to a Unified Braille Code for the English language worldwide.

Old Style Braille Alphabet with Contractions

Revised Braille Alphabet with Contractions

American Modified Braille Timeline

1870's - Joel W. Smith, a piano-tuning teacher at Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts, developed the American Modified Braille Code in the 1870’s. When developing his system, Smith designed characters he believed would be fast to read and an efficient use of paper.

The feature of the alphabet was that the most frequently recurring letters are represented by the smallest number of dots.

It could, therefore, be written and read quicker. Its competitor in the United States was New York Point.

1892 - American Modified Braille Code achieves inroads in 19 schools for the blind in the United States, including Perkins. Others schools, including the Institute, promoted New York Point. At this time, Great Britain is using a form of what we would today call Grade 2 braille. This meant that avid readers and scholars would need to know all 3 codes (American Modified Braille, New York Point and British Grade 2 Braille) to make use of the available literature.

1918 - Advocates of American Modified Braille code realized the need for a universal English language Braille code that would unite American and British literature into one code.

Chart showing percentages of Braille Usage by type in the early 1900's.

Learning Unified English Braille (UEB)

UEB Prep

A free app designed to teach Unified English Braille (UEB) to people who are sighted. Learn more about this app at Paths for Literacy's website by following this external link: https://www.pathstoliteracy.org/resource/ueb-prep-app/

The Braille Authority of North America (BANA)

Learn about the basics of braille at the BANA website by following this external link: https://www.brailleauthority.org/learn-about-braille

UEB Online

Administered by the NextSense Institute, the UEB Online website offers online training programs and competency exams in braille literacy and mathematics using the Unified English Braille (UEB) code. Learn more by following this link to their external website https://uebonline.org/