Al-Madinah daily

Louis Braille, the creator of the Braille system of printing and writing for the blind, was born in the town of Coupvray, 35 kilometers east of Paris, to a father who was a leather-worker. When he was three years old, Braille injured his eye on an awl while he was playing with sharp tools in his father’s shop. The injury got worse and transformed into an acute infection in the eye, which spread to the next eye, leaving him completely blind when he was only four years old.

His parents felt sad and sorry for him because he lost his sight forever and with it the chance to live an honorable life like any other human being. But Braille coped with this visual impairment and showed exceptional interest in science at school to the extent that his teachers nominated him for enrolment in the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris in 1819. From that moment on, he made great achievements that changed the world of the blind.

Braille graduated top of his class and was appointed assistant teacher of history, engineering and mathematics at the same institute. However, he became frustrated by the large bulky books and the inefficient and slow reading system used by the institution. He invented a special language based on raised dots printed on paper in 1829 and spent a great deal of his life developing and codifying the language, which came to be known later as the Braille System. In 1838, he added symbols for music, math, maps and others. He suffered from tuberculosis for 16 years and he died in 1852 at the age of 43. His reading system was adopted globally in 1878.

Braille’s story is inspirational. It shows how despite difficult conditions and circumstances, including the loss of sight at an early age, the young inventor never gave up. He kept working hard and developed a reading system that today helps millions of the blind around the world enjoy reading. I am certain that every blind person is grateful to Braille, because he helped them learn and read.