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Education All
About Braille
By
Anthony Frank
Who
invented Braille? The
Braille alphabet was invented by a boy who started out not blind, but curious
about his father's work. His
father worked with leather and sharp tools. One day he went into his father's
workshop and accidently stabbed himself in the eye with one of his father's tools. The
boy's name was Louis Braille. An infection in his right eye traveled to his left
eye and he went totally blind. When
he was 15 he wanted to figure out a way how to let blind people read and write
quickly. So he invented
Braille. Today, braille
is used in most countries in the world and you can even write numbers in braille.
How
Does Braille Work? A
braille cell is combination of six dots, three on one side and
three on the other. Louis Braille invented a way to make letters out of the six
dots in different combinations. Braille
numbers begin with the braille number sign, three dots up and one dot to the left
just like this,  In
braille, pages are separated by a line that you can feel going across the page.
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Six
dots in different combinations make
letters you can touch.
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People who do not have a
brailler can buy other machines that will press the braille letters onto paper,
but some of them are very noisy! You
can even surf the Web and turn it into braille. The machines that do this are
called Braille readers. You hook them up to your computer and the brailler will
translate the words on the web pages into braille. It's
veryimportant for people who make web pages to label the pictures so the brailler
can "see" what they are! There's
another machine that scans pictures translates them into dots so blind people
can feel them. Another machine looks like a metal rectangle. You use punch holes
into the stencil to make braille cells.
More
Information About Braille: One
company that makes braillers is Perkins Braillers. You
can find out more about braille here: Braille
Bug Louis
Braille Center About
the author: Anthony Frank lives
in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he attended classes with
a visually-impaired classmate. Anthony learned a lot about braille from
her and from her teacher. Says Anthony, "I would recommend braille to anybody
because it's a cool thing to learn and know."
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