World Braille Day 2024: Theme, History, Significance, Quotes,

World Braille Day is observed globally on January 4 to highlight the crucial significance of Braille as a channel of communication for partially sighted and blind people.

Braille Day 2024: One billion individuals worldwide with various impairments have less opportunity for health services, schooling, and work, and are more vulnerable to poverty, harassment, mistreatment, and cruelty. The purpose of World Braille Day is to promote understanding of the value of Braille as a communication tool for the blind and partly sighted.

This special day is celebrated to make people aware of how Braille contributes to the full fulfillment of human rights in the existence of people who are visually impaired.

World Braille Day 2024 Overview

Concept of Braille

Braille is a tactile portrayal of the alphabetical and mathematical signs that uses six dots to represent numbers and letters. Musical, technical, and analytical signs are all depicted using it. Braille is titled after Louis Braille, a blind and partially sighted person who created it in 19th century France.

As stated in article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Braille is significant in terms of literacy, freedom of speech and belief, and community cohesion.

History of World Braille Day

World Braille Day commemorates the invention of the Braille system by a Frenchman called Louis Braille, who was injured in an accident when he was quite young. Blind and partially visually impaired persons used to read using the Hauy system before this technique was developed. This featured embossed Latin characters on thick paper.

This approach was not only difficult, but it also only enabled individuals to read rather than write. The method’s flaws prompted Braille to develop a more simple and straightforward Braille system. It’s a symbol-based code that’s written in the shape of raised dots. People utilize their touch to decipher the Braille code and continue studying or communicating.

Significance of World Braille Day

The purpose of the day is to raise awareness of the braille language, which attempts to bridge the gap among normal and differently-abled individuals. Coupvray, France, gave birth to the creator of an extensively adopted touch device enabling blind persons to read and write. Braille created a system of writing that employed, paradoxically, an awl-like instrument to punch symbols on a sheet that can be sensed and read by blind people after himself being irreparably blinded at the age of three in his father’s saddle-making factory.

The method was generally neglected until Braille died in misery on January 6, 1852, in Paris, from illness. The United Nations declared January 4th as World Braille Day in a proclamation issued in 2018

World Braille Day 2024 Quotes

• “Braille is knowledge, and knowledge is power”. (Louis Braille)
• “Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded that we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the way we can bring this about”. (Louis Braille)
• “Louis Braille created the code of raised dots for reading and writing that bears his name and brings literacy, independence, and productivity to the blind”. (Bob Ney)
• “We are only as blind as we want to be”. (Maya Angelou)

World Braille Day 2024 Theme

Braille is still used for interpreting books and making life simpler for persons with visual impairments even 200 years later. Braille is often used in everyday life to interact with people who cannot see it, from buttons on lifts to shampoo bottles, medication packages, and payment machines.

Audio books and text-to-speech technologies integrated into smart phones and laptops have made it possible for the blind people to browse resources like Web Pages and messages even without Braille. The theme of World Braille Day 2024 is yet to be announced, however last year, the theme was Spread awareness about the importance of Braille.

There are many national and international organizations that observe World Braille Day on January 4. It was initiated by the United Nations General Assembly in the year 2019. The day is dedicated to Louis Braille(inventor of the Braille System).

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