http://www.firstschoolyears.com/history/resources/people/braille.htm
Louis Braille was born in town near Paris, France in 1809. As a
toddler he used to watch his father make shoes. One day, while his
father was not watching, he picked up a sharp pointed tool for
making holes in leather called an awl. The awl slipped, piercing
his eye and damaging it beyond repair. The other eye became
infected and before long Louis Braille was completely blind.
At the age of 10 Louis was sent to a school for blind children in
Paris. Children were taught to read and write using a system of
raised letters. This system was difficult to use as it was hard to
tell the letters apart. One day a soldier called Charles Barbier
visited the school. He had developed a system for reading messages
in the dark based upon a series of raised dots. Louis Braille
realised the potential of this system and developed it so that it
could be used for blind people.
Louis Braille's system was not accepted at first. One Headteacher
even banned the children from using it but this only spurred them
on to learn it in secret. Soon the benefits of the new system were
realised.
When Louis Braille grew up he became a teacher at the school in
which he was a student. It was not until after his death, however,
that his system was widely adopted. Today, Braille is used in
almost every country in the world.
