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14.06.2007 Commentary

How Do The Blind Read?

By Daily Graphic
How Do The Blind Read?
14.06.2007 LISTEN

Can you imagine never being able to see anything? The blind, however, have to deal with this handicap every day.

In 1793, a calligrapher by the name of Naletin Havy designed a simple italic character which was embossed. This system was introduced in the institute of the blind which he had founded.

T M Lucas took up Havy's idea of the embossed print and created an alphabet using phonetic symbols. These symbols were written on a slightly raised platform. He used this method, in 1837, to transcribe the New Testament. But the actual credit goes to Louis Braille.

He developed a reading system which used dots to represent letters. In 1829, Braille published the dot system and based it on a system of six dots. he devised alphabets, punctuation marks, numerals and even notation of music.

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