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History of Writing Codes for the Blind » British Braille

British Braille

Braille was introduced to Britain in 1861. In 1876, a French-based system with a few hundred English contractions and abbreviations was adopted as the predominant script in Great Britain.
 
However, the contractions and abbreviations proved unsatisfactory, and in 1902 the current grade-2 system, called Revised Braille, was adopted in the British Commonwealth. In 1878, the ideal of basing all braille alphabets of the world on the original French alphabetic order was accepted by Britain, Germany, and Egypt 
Schools for the blind in the United States ignored what was happening in Europe. The believed their systems were superior and taught American Modified Braille or New York Point. It would not be until 1918, that they would commit to a unified braille code for the English language world wide.