World Braille Day 2023

Tags: Important Days

World Braille Day is celebrated on 4 January of every year around the world and it also marks the birth anniversary of Braille’s inventor Louis Braille.

Important facts

• This day is very important for blind people because on this day, Louis Braille, who brought light to the lives of the blind, was born.

• It was Louis Braille who gave birth to the Braille script, due to which today blind people are also able to read and write and are moving forward.

• Thus it is a perfect day to recognise his efforts. 

• The day also recognizes that people with visual impairments are equally entitled to the same standards of human rights as all others.

Background of the day

• By passing a resolution on 6 November 2018, the United Nations General Assembly decided to celebrate the birthday of Louis Braille, the father of Braille script, on 4 January every year as 'World Braille Day'.

• World Braille Day was celebrated for the first time on 4 January 2019.

• According to a report by the World Health Organization of the United Nations, about 39 million people are blind in the world and about 253 million people are suffering from some kind of eye problem. Braille script is very helpful for such people.

What is a Braille script?

• Braille is a system of reading and writing by touch used by the blind.

• It consists of an arrangement of dots that form the letters of the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks.

• It was first developed by a young Frenchman named Louis Braille in the late 1820s.

• He created Braille by modifying a system of night writing that was intended for military use.

• Braille devices help blind people to recognize letters easily.

• There is a wide range of electronic devices to meet the needs of blind people and these devices use different technologies to transmit different types of graphic information such as pictures, maps, graphs, text etc.