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The video clip "History of Braille Including Braille Reading Demonstration" is from our Disability Awareness Videos Category.
Video Details: In this video clip from The National Federation of The Blind the history and power of Braille is explored with commentary from Braille readers. Today books written in Braille are available in every subject area, from modern day fiction writings all the way through mathematics, law, and music. Topics covered in the video include the history of Louis Braille and the braille code he created, along with how braille has evolved into what the blind use today. The speed of the Braille readers on this video is amazing, yet quite achievable to those that have learned it.
The Braille system was based on a method of communication originally developed by Charles Barbier in response to Napoleon's demand for a code that soldiers could use to communicate silently and without light at night called night writing. Barbier's system of sets of 12 embossed dots encoding 36 different sounds was too difficult for soldiers to perceive by touch, and was rejected by the military. In 1821 he visited the National Institute for the Blind in Paris, where he met Louis Braille. Braille identified the two major defects of the code: first, by representing only sounds, the code was unable to give the orthography of the words; two, the human finger could not encompass the whole symbol without moving, and so could not move rapidly from one symbol to another. His modification was to use a 6 dot cell - the Braille system - representing all the letters of the alphabet which revolutionized written communication for the blind.
Link to Video: "History of Braille Including Braille Reading Demonstration"
