4th January 2025
World Braille Day is celebrated internationally on 4th January – the birthday of its creator, Louis Braille, who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident. The date was chosen by the UN General Assembly via a proclamation in November 2018, and the first celebration was on 4th January 2019. It is a day to celebrate the vital importance of this means of communication for blind and visually impaired people.
Braille was based on a tactile code, now known as Night Writing, which was developed by Charles Barbier. The name came about when it was considered as a means for soldiers to communicate silently at night and without a light source. This method of writing with raised dots which could be read by touch, was adopted by the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. At the tender age of fifteen, and a student at the school using these tools, and Barbier’s idea of communicating with raised dots in a form of code, Louis Braille developed his more complete and flexible system for communications in 1924.
