For the sixth time, on 4TH of January 2024, the whole world celebrates Braille as one of the most important communication tools for blind people. World Braille day was announced by the United Nations in 2018 and has been celebrated since January 2019. The system of six dots in the braille cell enables the writing of letters and symbols, allowing written information to be displayed in tactile form.
In the video of European Blind Union, The importance of braille (external link), you can learn about how braille works and how it can be used. It doesn’t always have to be a difficult technology that makes information in braille accessible to blind people. Even in a home environment, braille can easily be used to label a variety of objects. The video is a cross-cutting presentation of the use of braille in many areas. More information about this video can be found in the article Video: The importance of Braille (by the Braille workgroup of European Blind Union).
In 2023, the European Blind Union issued a position paper, Access to reading and use of Braille – A question for the future, which highlights the importance of Braille in the lives of blind people and calls on all Member States and stakeholders to support the requirements for the implementation of Braille in education and in the everyday lives of blind people. In fourteen important points, it presents these demands as the cornerstones of the future use of braille. The use of braille documents, textbooks and braille displays in the educational process of the blind is one of the main priorities of our braille future.
On the anniversary of Louis Braille’s birth, we commemorate together the fact that, thanks to the typeface he created, he put the key to knowledge and access to education in the hands of the blind. Even today, for the blind, braille is one of the forms of receiving information and, above all, the only way of reading text with all the attributes of reading itself, that is, learning about grammar, stylistics or the graphic design of text. It is essential that blind people should be able to make effective use of all the ways of receiving information that remain available after the loss of sight, and that they should focus on the possibility of using touch in addition to the auditory perception of text from audiobooks or screen readers from computers and mobile phones. With the current amount of information, it is necessary to be prepared to work effectively with it. That is why the use of braille is very important. With the advent of newer and newer digital technologies, the use of braille in the digital environment is also improving, and the near future will certainly bring multi-line braille displays and much more in this regard.
Other resources on WBD 2024
- World Braille Day 2024 by Haben Girma | Haben Girma, deafblind braille user, January 4th, 2024
- The magical dots that opened my world: celebrating world braille day | Blind Girl Blogs, January 2024