ISLAMABAD:Like other parts of the world the World Braille Day was observed in the country on January 4, in memory of Louis Braille, the inventor of special symbols for the visually impaired.
Braille is a way of reading embossed letters by touching the paper with one’s fingertips. The method of literacy was invented in 1834 by Louis Braille, a blind man from a seminary in Paris.
He created a symbolic set in the form of raised dots on a piece of paper. These raised points can easily be felt with the help of fingertips. Thus he made a complete language from the dots on the paper.
Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Inayatullah Khan argues, “The braille alphabet is a great achievement for the visually impaired. Centres should be set up in PIMS and other major institutes to teach it to the public.”
He said while there were institutions in the country dedicated to this purpose, there was a dire need to educate people about this script, so that visually-impaired people could also learn like their peers.
The braille language does not rely on actual letters of the alphabet, but on the symbols of letters and numbers. Braille has also been used and developed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in all parts of the world since 1949.