TACTILE GRAMMER

Whilst researching visual grammar, I started thinking about how the blind, or partially sighted people, deal with visual instructions. I can only imagine - as a person who has worn glasses for over 35 years – how difficult it must be to have little or no vision. I hate wearing glasses and always have done. As a kid, when at school, I always had to try and sit right at the front, in order to see the blackboard.  If you sat at the back of the class you really struggled when copying text from the board. So you would have to ask your mate if you could copy his work. Then you would get into trouble for talking. If you did pluck up the courage and put your national health glasses on, someone shouts out “four eyes”. However, having said all of that, I am so thankful to have sight - however poor it may be!

But for those who are visually impaired, or indeed totally blind, they do have Braille. Braille is an amazing tool, which enables blind people to read and write. Braille is designed to be read by fingers, rather than eyes. With Braille, adults and children can read pretty much anything.

Braille is a code, based on six dots, arranged in two columns of three dots. If you look at the Braille alphabet, it reminds me of one of the first exercises we did. It also reminds me of dominoes, which also work on six dots.

There are different types of Braille codes. These use variations of the six dots, to represent all the letters of the alphabet, numbers, punctuation marks and commonly-occurring groups of letters. There are 63 possible combinations of the six dots.

There are two grades of Braille:

·         Uncontracted (previously Grade 1) Braille is a straightforward letter for letter translation from print and includes the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks.

·         Contracted (previously Grade 2) Braille has special signs for combinations of letters and more commonly occurring words, such as 'sh', 'ing', 'the' and 'for'. This reduces the size of Braille documents by about 25 per cent, and generally increases reading speed.

There are also special codes for music, mathematics, science and foreign languages. 

A blind French schoolboy named Louis Braille devised the code over 200 years ago. Louis was born in 1809, in a small town near Paris called Coupvray. He was from a poor family and his father worked as the village saddler.

One day, when he was a small boy, he crept into his father's workshop to play. He picked up an awl, (a sharp tool used for making holes in leather).
As he bent over, the awl slipped and pierced his eye, damaging it forever. Sometime later his other eye became infected by the first and he lost his sight altogether. He was just four years old and his future must have seemed uncertain. However Louis Braille was to become one of the most famous Frenchmen to have ever lived.

Despite his difficult start in life, Louis was an intelligent boy and excelled at the local school. Noticing his potential, the local landowner offered to arrange a scholarship for him at one of the first schools for the blind. Reluctant to send Louis away from home, but at the same time, worried about his future, his parents agreed. Aged ten, Louis left for Paris to attend the Royal Institution for Blind Youth. Life at the school was hard, the building was damp and unhealthy, and discipline was severe. Pupils were mainly taught practical skills, such as chair caning and slipper-making, so that they could make a living when they left school.

The boys were taught to read, using a system called 'raised type' where letters were created by pressing shaped copper wire onto a page. Louis learnt quickly, but found the system frustrating and slow. It was impossible for people with sight loss to write anything for themselves using this raised type and it could take months to read a single book.

It was at the Institute for Blind Youth, in 1821, that Louis was first introduced to the idea of using a coded system of raised dots. Charles Barbier, a captain in Napoleon's army, visited the school to demonstrate his 'night writing'. This was a tactile system designed for soldiers, to send and receive messages at night, without speaking. It used raised dots and dashes rather than actual letters. Louis quickly realised how useful this system could be, but thought it was too complicated. Over the next few years, he worked hard to develop his own version of the code, using just six dots to represent the standard alphabet.

By 1824, aged just 15 years old, Louis had found 63 ways to use a six-dot cell, in an area no larger than a fingertip. He had also perfected his 'planchette' or writing slate, which gave precise placing for the pattern of raised dots when writing Braille.

He spent his life teaching the system to as many people as possible, first as a fellow student at the school and then later when he became a teacher there. He translated many books into Braille and was much liked and respected by his students.

However, spending so much of his life in such poor and damp conditions, probably contributed to Louis Braille contracting tuberculosis in his twenties. He battled with the illness for the rest of this life. Despite encountering much resistance to Braille, he never stopped believing in his system. He died on 6 January 1852, just two days after his 43rd birthday, unaware that his invention would one day be used all over the world.

In 1952, Louis Braille's accomplishments were finally recognised by the French government and his body was exhumed and reburied in the Pantheon in Paris, with other French national heroes. Today he is celebrated as a hero for all blind and partially sighted people. He gave the gift of independence and the joy of reading to thousands of people around the world.

Here are two or three quotes from blind people that I like.

"I can't imagine life without my Braille alarm clock. I suppose I'd sleep in a lot."

"With Braille my fingers have the freedom to explore the delicate rhythms of love sonnets."

"We, the blind, are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg." Helen Keller

DESIGN FOR VISUAL GRAMMER IN BRAILLE

Main body of text from the RNIB: http://www.rnib.org.uk