January marks the month in which the Spirit Foundation joins The League of Friends of the Blind (LOFOB) in celebrating the invention and development of braille. Little understood by those not familiar with its use, braille is named after its creator, Louise Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed the braille code based on the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing.
Braille characters are formed using a combination of six raised dots arranged in a 3 × 2 matrix, called the braille cell. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguishes one character from another.
For LOFOB, braille literacy is arguably the most important skill a blind person may learn. Braille instruction is available in English and Afrikaans and facilitated by multilingual instructors.
LOFOB offers a braille printing service to assist businesses with making information accessible to blind and visually impaired people who are Braille literate. The service includes proof reading done by clients in training. Clients have included PinkDrive and the Western Cape Police Ombudsman.
For LOFOB, early braille education is crucial to literacy, education and employment among the blind.
One international study found that people who learned braille at an early age did just as well as, if not better than, their sighted peers in several areas, including vocabulary and comprehension. Despite the evolution of new technologies, including screen reader software that reads information aloud, braille provides blind people with access to spelling, punctuation and other aspects of written language less accessible through audio alone.
Children who are blind miss out on fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools, such as access to educational materials in braille. Children who are blind or visually impaired can begin learning foundational braille skills from a very young age to become fluent braille readers as they get older.
Sighted children are naturally exposed to written language on signs, on TV and in the books they see. Blind children require the same early exposure to literacy, through access to braille rich environments and opportunities to explore the world around them. Print-braille books, for example, present text in both print and braille and can be read by sighted parents to blind children (and vice versa), allowing blind children to develop an early love for reading even before formal reading instruction begins.
Adults who experience sight loss later in life or who did not have the opportunity to learn it when they were younger can also learn braille. In most cases, adults who learn braille were already literate in print before vision loss and so instruction focuses more on developing the tactile and motor skills needed to read braille.
In the preliminary adult study, while evaluating the correlation between adult literacy skills and employment, it was found that 44% of the participants who had learned to read in braille were unemployed, compared to the 77% unemployment rate of those who had learned to read using print. Statistically, history has proven that braille reading proficiency provides an essential skill set that allows blind or low-vision children to compete with their sighted peers in a school environment and later in life as they enter the workforce.
While some have suggested that audio-based technologies (used on computers and smart phones) will decrease the need for braille, technological advancements such as braille displays have continued to make braille more accessible and available.
For LOFOB, braille remains as essential as print is to the sighted!
