World Braille Day 2023: World Braille Day, marked on January 4, emphasizes the significance of Braille as a form of communication for the partially sighted and blind. Since 2019, the United Nations has observed the day. Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, which is also celebrated on World Braille Day. After losing his sight during childhood, the French educator devised the Braille technique.
January 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Significance of World Braille Day 2023
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. Until Braille’s untimely death from illness on January 6, 1852, in Paris, the technique was generally neglected. In a declaration released in 2018, the UN recognised January 4th to be World Braille Day.
What is Braille?
Braille is a tactile representation of musical, mathematical, and scientific symbols as well as alphabetic and numerical symbols using six dots for each letter and number. Braille (named after its inventor in 19th century France, Louis Braille) is used by blind and partially sighted people to read the same books and periodicals as those printed in a visual font.
Braille is essential in the context of education, freedom of expression and opinion, as well as social inclusion, as reflected in article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.