[Nfbf-l] Happy Birthday Louis Braille

[Sherri]

>HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOUIS BRAILLE
>Louis Braille Touched Us All
> >> by Deborah Kendrick
> >>
> >> Editor's Note: The following tribute to Louis Braille first appeared in
> >> the January 8, 2006, edition of the Columbus Dispatch and then was
> >> reprinted
> >> in the February 2006 issue of the Braille Monitor, a publication of the
> >> National Federation of the Blind. The author, Deborah Kendrick, is a
> >> freelance writer, a columnist, and a Federation leader in Ohio. Her
> >> tribute is especially appropriate as we celebrate, on January 4, 2009,
> >> the 200th
> >> birthday of the man who invented the Braille code:
> >>
> >> I was using a phone in a hotel lobby years ago when my friend, laughing,
> >> tapped me on the shoulder and guided my hand to a place on the wall at
> >> least a foot above my head. In a millisecond the dot pattern my fingers
> >> encountered sent the printed message to my brain, "No smoking." (What
> >> were they thinking to post a sign in Braille on a wall above a pay phone
> >> where no ordinary mortal, Braille-reading or otherwise, was likely to be
> >> touching?) Beyond the joke, that memory evokes pleasure. Like hundreds
> >> of other tactile glances over the years--finding a bit of Braille on a
> >> monument, a commemorative plaque, a bottle of perfume, even some
> >> articles of clothing at Target--the aha flash of joy is one of sheer
> >> delight in
> >> being included, having my literacy count as much as anyone else's.
> >>
> >> It's a gift of the very best kind, finding words I can read in
> >> unexpected places, and an especially grand gesture of the inclusive kind
> >> swept
> >> through cyberspace this week. E-mail messages were rapidly criss-crossing
> >> the
> >> planet last week as blind people and their friends and colleagues spread
> >> the word that Google's home page greeted visitors with the Google logo
> >> in Braille, along with a "Happy Birthday Louis Braille" message to honor
> >> the inventor's birthday, January 4.
> >>
> >> In 1809 three boys were born who would change the world: Abraham
> >> Lincoln, Charles Darwin, and--the one sadly under-celebrated--Louis
> >> Braille. Born
> >> in Coupvray, France, Braille was blinded at age three in an accident in
> >> his
> >> father's harness-making shop. He was lucky to have loving parents who
> >> encouraged his independence and who sent him at age ten to a boarding
> >> school in Paris, one of the first such schools for blind children.
> >>
> >> And the rest of us--generations of blind people in every country of the
> >> world--have been lucky that he was a genius who seized a code shown him
> >> by Charles Barbier, a code used for "night-writing" by soldiers, and
> >> perfected it as a means of reading and writing for people without sight.
> >> When
> >> asked by parents of blind children what single tool has been most
> >> significant
> >> to me as a writer, student, parent, advocate, all-round member and lover
> >> of
> >> society, the answer is unequivocal: BRAILLE.
> >>
> >> As I write these words, I look (with my hands) at them in Braille. When
> >> I read my e-mail, press releases, newsletters, and the latest romance or
> >> thriller--in hardcopy or electronically--I read them all in Braille.
> >> And I am not alone. The good news is that between 85 and 90 percent of
> >> all blind adults who are employed are Braille literate. But the bad news
> >> is
> >> that only 30 percent of all blind American adults are employed--most of
> >> that larger group having never learned Braille. Well-meaning but
> >> misguided educators have diminished emphasis on Braille in schools, so
> >> that only
> >> 10 percent of blind children today are taught to read and write.
> >>
> >> Louis Braille was an inventor by the age of twelve. He grew to be a
> >> beloved teacher and gifted musician. Because of his remarkable invention,
> >> blind
> >> people today are teachers, doctors, lawyers, writers, musicians--and
> >> parents reading Braille storybooks to their children.