Category Archives: Biographies

BRAILLE, LOUIS, b. Coupvray, France, 1809, d. 1852. Inventor and teacher

Louis Braille lost his vision as a result of an accident when he was 3 years old. In 1819, Louis’ family enrolled him as a student at the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. At 15 years of age, while still a student at the Institution, he developed a system for teaching people who are blind to read and write. This system is based on six raised dots arranged in a 2 x 3 grid. Individual dots or combinations of dots (and spaces) represent different letters of the alphabet and other graphemes. Braille’s system is the preferred method today for teaching literacy skills to people who are blind. Just 2 years after Braille invented the system, he was asked to join the teaching staff at the Institution, an association that continued until his death in 1852 at age 43. Continue reading →