Tuesday, 16 July 2013

32

Okay, I have decided I'm going to try to learn Braille. As in the little dotty language that fills books, it's something new and something to look into because quite frankly I don't know how it works or how anyone can read it.

So, Braille...
It's a tactile language, although it can be used on computers, through refreshable braille displays/ (input: through a slate and stylus or type on a braille keyboard, output: a printer with a braille embosser.)

It is named as such due to its creator Louis Braille, a blind french man, at the age of around 15, for the first form of the code, used for night writing, 1824. The night writing was a military code developed by Charles Barbier as a means to communicate without light and in silence. After being rejected as the system used 12 embossed dots for 36 sounds, it was too confusing, Barbier met Braille at the Royal insitiute for the blind in paris, 1821. Braille organised the code, using 6 dot cells and a specific pattern for each letter. Braille was published in 1829, and the second revision was published in 1837 with a binary form of writing.

The characters of Braille are blocks called 'cells' which contain the letters as 'raised dots'. It's the way these raised dots are arranged and the total of them that seperate each letter. In the English Braille there are three levels of encoding, as the braille originated as transcription codes, 1 - letter by letter trascription, 2 - abbreviations and contractions, 3 - non standardized personal shorthands. (It is similar to shorthand in the idea that you make your own form of writing, whichever arrangement of the letters is ideal for you. )


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