WORLD BRAILLE USAGE

A survey of efforts towards uniformity of Braille notation

by
Sir Clutha Mackenzie
Chairman, World Braille Council

UNESCO

Corrigendum §

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28 In Braille table, sign for Devanagari T should read 1-2-3-4-6.
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Achevé d’imprimer le 26 fevrier 1954
sur les presses de l’Imprimerie GEORGES LANG
11 à 15, rue Curial, Paris-19e
pour l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’Education,
la Science et la Culture, 19, avenue Kléber, Paris-16e.
Copyright 1953 by Unesco, Paris.

[seal]

UNESCO wishes to express its gratitude
to the European office of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind,
which undertook responsability [sic] for supervising the production and printing of this work.

UNESCO PUBLICATION MC. 51. D.9A

Foreword §

This reference book compiled by Sir Clutha Mackenzie, one of the ablest leaders of the blind and himself without sight, is far more than the history of Braille, the dot system used by the blind in reading and writing — and that is an impressive task. In its work since 1949 Unesco has lifted it from a jungle of punctographic codes to a universal medium that can be adapted to all the languages, and has assembled in this book the Braille charts of many tongues. This is surely as difficult, and requires as much painstaking work as writing a dictionary.

Braille has been in existence since 1825 when its inventor, Louis Braille, set up his alphabet of raised dots as a lighthouse to pierce the darkness of the blind. The embossed Roman letters and other systems for tactile reading used before that date had proved unsatisfactory. Instruction of the sightless in literature and music was largely oral, and tangible writing was virtually impossible. But Louis Braille’s alphabet could be easily felt by the finger, and the arrangement of dots in different positions to represent individual letters and letter groupings gave the education of the blind an order and a stability it had not earlier possessed. His conviction was that his method was suitable for universal application — to any language, longhand or shorthand, to music and to mathematics. As has been proved, it was adequate for all purposes.

Unfortunately, however, there existed no central agency to achieve and preserve world-wide uniformity in Braille, and pioneers in work for the blind of other lands like China or India had to make their own adaptations of Braille to the language in which they were to teach. Thus they unintentionally created for future generations of the blind a chaos of dissimilar Braille prints. It is only in the last few years that any serious effort has been made to evolve a universally acceptable plan jor the application of Braille symbols to all languages.

It has taken the compelling influence of Unesco through its Braille consultant, Sir Clutha Mackenzie, to provide the means of satisfying the common needs of the blind throughout the globe in education and intellectual pursuits and to encourage their ever growing unity. Sir Clutha Mackenzie and those Braille experts from many lands who have attended Unesco conferences in Paris, London, Beirut and Montevideo deserve warmest gratitude for their patience and willingness to debate the countless points of difference in Braille systems until they could harmonize them to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. Truly, in this book a magnificent monument has been raised to Louis Braille, from whose life-dream has been wrought the mental and spiritual emancipation of the blind in every land.

HELEN KELLER,
Westport, Connecticut.

Chapter 1

UNESCO’S SERVICES TO ORTHOGRAPHIC BRAILLE §

The one hundred and twenty years between the publication of Louis Braille’s system, in 1829, and the request to Unesco, in 1949, to lend its services to rationalize Braille usage in many parts of the world, divide readily into two main phases. The first fifty years was that of the die-hard retreat of the cumbersome old forms of embossings which the blind could not write; then seventy years throughout which the original Braille had to compete with many reconstructed forms of itself.

The defeat of the old embossings was inevitable, a victory in which the declaration by the blind that Braille answered their need far better than the old types, played a major part, although, by common consent one of the old forms, Moon, still survives to play a useful and complementary role, that of providing a clear bold type for older people whose touch is not good enough for reading Braille.

The seventy years of civil war between the numerous adaptations of Braille was probably equally inevitable — the divergences embodied theoretical improvements, and they had to be tried out before their authors realised that, while a new form offered local advantages in readability or economy of space, these were outweighed by wider cultural considerations. And thus the earlier divergent systems, introduced in German, American, Modern Greek and Hebrew Brailles duly yielded to a return to the original French.

In Asia, because of the added factor of varied scripts, Braille history had been even more erratic and consequently the experimentation phase more prolonged.

Decisions taken in Paris in 1878 recommended that everywhere the symbols should retain the same letter values as in the original French Braille. Outside Europe this practical advice was often neglected and, in the absence of any recognized symbols for letter-sounds not embraced by the Latin alphabet, Asian and African languages had been compelled to make arbitrary allocations. Throughout the 1940’s the movements towards the establishment of single Braille systems for the three important areas of the Perso-Arabic, the Indo-Aryan and the Chinese languages gained momentum. Governments were beginning to consider linking the education of the blind to that for seeing children and, in doing so were coming to realize how chaotic Braille was in their countries. Clearly, before organized education could be properly founded, single systems must be established and, more than that, established on a sound basis. These were, in fact, the circumstances which, in April 1949, led to the Joint Secretary for Education, Government of India, Dr. Humayun Kabir, writing to the Director General of Unesco, Dr. Jaime Torres Bodet, as follows:

“Sir,

“I have the honour to draw your attention to a problem, the solution of which would help to lighten the burden of the blind in all countries of the world. I need not dilate on the handicaps from which they suffer, nor the steps taken till now in helping them to become useful citizens. One of the foremost of these is the invention of the Braille Script through which unsighted persons have been enabled to read and write. Unfortunately, however, the advantages of this great discovery have been minimized on account of the different ways in which the same Braille symbols are used for different sounds in different languages.

“The number of the blind in any country is small and it is obvious that the State can spend only a fraction of its resources for their education. Production of literature in Braille is at the same time difficult and expensive. The fact that the scripts differ from country to country has prevented the production of literature in Braille on a sufficiently large scale and thus added to the cost of an already expensive process. It is surprising, but till 1932, even English-speaking countries did not have a uniform system of Braille.

“In India, with its ten or eleven major languages, the problem of different Braille scripts has been one of the main obstacles to the provision of larger facilities for the education of the blind. The Government of India, therefore, appointed in 1941 a Committee to investigate the possibility of evolving a uniform system of Braille for the whole country. This Committee included among its members distinguished linguists and phoneticians and, after six years’ work, evolved a system known as Uniform Indian Braille to cover all Indian languages. Some idea of the difficulties the Committee had to face and the measure of success achieved may be obtained from the fact that these Indian scripts are derived from the sources so different as the Sanskritic, the […]

Arabic, the Dravidian and, in the case of some of the tribal languages, the Roman. The Government of India has accepted the recommendations of that Committee and we have now taken in hand plans for setting up a Press for printing suitable literature in all the Indian languages in one Uniform Braille script.

“Sir Clutha Mackenzie, who is a distinguished expert on Braille, has drawn our attention to the desirability of trying to extend this process of unification still further. He suggests that there is a greater possibility of evolving an international script in the case of Braille than in the case of visual scripts. He has pointed out that in Braille, the Slavonic scripts have been affiliated to the Roman. Our experience in India shows that even Sanskritic and Arabic scripts can be brought within one uniform system. The Government of India feel that if such a uniform international Braille can be evolved by agreement in the same way as English Braille was standardized in 1932 by agreement between the English-speaking countries of the world, it will not only mark a great step towards the unification of the world but also prove of immense advantage to the blind of all countries.

“As I have stated above, the Government of India are now proceeding with preparations for setting up a Press in order to produce the necessary literature in Uniform Indian Braille. The preliminary work in this connection is likely to take a year or so. Once, however, the process of printing in Uniform Indian Braille has begun, it would be difficult and involve financial wastage if we had to switch on to a different script. I am informed that there is also a move in the Arabic-speaking world to evolve one uniform Braille for all the Arab countries. The Government of India, therefore, feel that now is the time, before these new systems have been brought into vogue, to take up the question of one uniform Braille for the whole world.

“I would, therefore, request you to examine whether it would be possible to have the question of uniform world Braille considered at the time of the next General Conference of Unesco in September this year…

“As I view the problem, the question of world Braille reduces to the preparation of a Braille which will satisfy the needs of the Roman, the Slavonic, the Arabic, the Indian and the Chinese scripts… I may add that as far as I can judge, adoption of such a scheme would not impose any extra burden of expenditure on Unesco. Unesco’s role, as I see it, would be to act as the clearing house and perhaps also as the catalytic agency, but the actual cost of production of literature in the world Braille, when evolved, would be the responsibility of the countries concerned.

“You are perhaps aware that the National Institute for the Blind, London, are now preparing for a ten-day international conference on blind welfare in Oxford during August this year. The Conference is restricted to representatives from Europe and North America, but I have written to Sir Clutha Mackenzie to examine whether it would be possible to associate with the conference at least three experts of the Perso-Arabic languages, the Chinese group and India in order to have a preliminary discussion on world Braille. I, however, feel that the initiative in this matter must come from Unesco, though obviously Unesco would, for the purpose, request the co-operation of national organizations like the Foundation for the Blind in America, the National Institute for the Blind in England, the Ministry of Education, Government of India and other similar organizations elsewhere.”

Yours faithfully,
(signed) HUMAYUN KABIR,
Joint Secretary to the Government of India.

The Director-General placed this request before the Executive Board of Unesco. It recognized the problem as an international one to which it was competent for Unesco to lend its services in contributing to a solution which would be satisfactory to the governments and to the blind throughout the world. Accordingly Unesco accepted the task.

The following is a chronicle of the steps taken under Unesco auspices between the beginning of the work on July 1st, 1949 and its close on December 31st, 1951.

July 1st 1949. Sir Clutha Mackenzie accepted an appointment as consultant to “study the world Braille situation as it stood and to advise Unesco on Braille systems”.

September 20th 1949. The Consultant’s “Survey on World Braille Problems” was submitted by the Director-General to the Fourth Session of the General Conference of Unesco at which the Director-General was “instructed to study the world Braille situation and, with the advice of a competent committee, to organize an international conference with a view to agreeing on certain international principles which would allow the greatest degree of uniformity in Braille and would improve its rationalization and develop its extention [sic]. Such regional discussions as may later prove necessary should subsequently be organized by the Secretariat.”

December 15–21st 1949. The Advisory Committee on Braille Problems met at Unesco House, Paris, to consider the Consultant’s report and to make […]

recommendations and draft an agenda for an International Meeting on Braille Uniformity to be held later. The Advisory Committee had the following membership:

March 20–29th 1950. The International Meeting on Braille Uniformity met in Paris. Its recommendations are given on page 141. In consultation with their governments the following ladies and gentlemen were invited to attend as representatives of Braillists in their linguistic areas or as linguists, educators of the blind or publishers of Braille literature:

June 1950. The Director-General of Unesco submitted the recommendations of the International Meeting on Braille Uniformity to the Fifth Session of the General Conference of Unesco in Florence, which resolved:

“To convene two regional conferences for the standardization of Braille script; one for the regions which use the Arabic alphabet and one for Spanish or Portuguese-speaking regions; to assist in the establishment of a world Braille Council; to compile a world Braille chart; to publish, or promote the publication of a reference book on Braille uniformity and to disseminate it among educational and blind welfare organizations.”

July 17th 1950. Study made of the linking of Braille symbols with those of the International Phonetic Association and discussed with Professor Daniel Jones, M.A., Dr. Phil., Professor Emeritus of Phonetics in the University of […]

London. This document appears in Chapter 10, page 49.

July 19th 1950. The informal committee on the Uniform Adaptation of Braille to the Tribal languages of Africa met in London. Its report is embodied in Chapter 8, page 41. February 12–17th 1951. The Regional Conference on Braille Uniformity (Middle East, India and South East Asia), met in Beirut, Lebanon, to consider the establishment of Braille uniformity between these territories. Those who attended were:

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Chapter 2

LOUIS BRAILLE AND HIS SYSTEM §

The Braille system consists of sixty-three symbols, being actually sixty-three of the sixty-four permutations of the dots forming the domino six. To facilitate the description of individual symbols, the dots are conventionally numbered, those of the left-hand column being numbered 1-2-3 from top to bottom and those of the right-hand, 4-5-6.

Letter “A” is Dot 1; “B”, Dots 1-2; “C”, Dots 1-4 and so on. The first ten letters are formed from the top four dots, the second ten letters comprise the first ten repeated plus Dot 3, a similar symmetry continues the division of the sixty-three symbols until seven groups of symbols have been formed.

In Roman Braille, the alphabet absorbs twenty-six of the signs, ten are devoted to international punctuation marks, while the remaining twenty-seven are used variously to meet the special needs of individual languages or for abridgment.

Numbers are represented by the first ten letters preceded by a numeral sign.

For a number of languages, two “Grades” of Braille have been established. In Grade 1, all words are fully spelt, letter for letter with the visual script. Grade 2 is the everyday form used for general purposes, Braille periodicals, books and letter-writing. It embraces a greater or lesser range of abridged signs for the expression of conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, prefixes, suffixes, frequently recurring groups of letters and common words. Its primary purpose is to reduce the bulkiness of Braille books which means a saving in the cost of production (always expensive) as well as in storage space and costs of distribution. It also saves the Braillist some of the effort involved in reading and writing.

A few languages have established very highly abridged systems, usually considered as “Grade 3” Braille, in which the original full text is scarcely recognizable and which border on a true shorthand. These are too complex for readers who are not endowed with three qualifications — an extensive command of the language, a good memory and a highly sensitive touch.

Touch, indeed, is a governing factor in the extent to which Braille is used. A fairly sharp distinction in capacity divides the readers to whom, as children in a school for the blind, Braille comes almost as second nature, from those who, losing their vision as adults, must switch over their method of reading, from sight to touch. The latter are almost invariably slow readers and the older people are, the more difficult it is for them to master Braille. Commercial Braille shorthands have come into use in most European languages; and stenography and typewriting is one of the established occupations for the blind. A trend in recent years, notably in Germany and Belgium, has been towards shorthand systems employing a seventh and even an eighth dot to add both to the range of symbols and to the speed of reporting speech.

From the beginning Louis Braille applied his system to the expression of music. Other countries adopted his notation, but gradually differences grew up. In 1929, an international conference in Paris, under the auspices of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind, brought general agreement on a uniform notation. Divergences in presentation, however, still persist, and a number of countries have voiced the wish that a fresh attempt should be made to restore and extend uniformity in music in every part of the world.

Braille is applied to various other practical purposes — the expression of mathematical and chemical symbols, the marking of the faces of watches, meters, gauges, thermometers and playing cards, and adapted too, to the outlining of geographical maps and plans of cities and buildings.

The process of Braille printing is expensive and almost all of it is done by voluntary organizations, often with the aid of State subsidies. The Braille text is stereotyped on soft metal plates by hand or power-driven machines. These plates are set up on a flat or rotary press which embosses the dots on strong thick paper usually dampened to facilitate the printing of smooth dots without rupturing the paper.

Many single copies of books, such as those required by the student of higher studies or by the more intellectual reader, are Brailled by hand by voluntary sighted transcribers, whose efforts have resulted in the building up of valuable libraries of reference works.

The Universal Postal Union, under a long-standing agreement, extends special concession for the carriage of Braille by post, which greatly facilitates correspondence between blind people […]

and the circulation of Braille magazines and library books, while exemption from customs duties appears to be universal.

PRE-BRAILLE METHODS OF TOUCH READING. §

Braille was not the first, or by any means the only method of touch reading. The earnest desire of the blind to find access to literature and of their sighted friends to open the door for them, led to many experiments in a variety of media. Even after Braille’s invention, other forms of embossed symbols were planned and used-some employing lines and dots, others having the form of simplified Roman capitals.

At an International Conference on Blind Welfare in Cairo, in 1911, one of the delegates, Dr. Eloui Pasha, gave an account of what was typical of early efforts of this nature. He had come across records in a library in Istanbul of a distinguished blind Arab professor, Zain-Din Al Amidi by name, of the University of Moustansiryeh, Iraq, who, in the 14th Century, improvised a method by which he identified his books and summarized certain information.

Although Zain-Din Al Amidi became blind soon after his birth, he led a studious life, interesting himself particularly in jurisprudence and foreign languages, notably Turkish, Persian and Greek. In his large library he knew the place occupied by each book and on receiving a request for information could find the exact volume without assistance. He knew the price of every book, because for each new volume, he took a piece of fine paper, rolled it tightly between his fingers and bent the coil in the contours of the Arabic characters, thus showing the price paid. He gummed these to the inside of the cover, making a surrounding frame of the same thickness of paper to prevent the raised characters becoming flattened, thereby preserving them indefinitely.

The following account of other efforts to create scripts is given in Dr. Harry Best’s book, The Blind, published in the United States of America.

“The first recorded attempt was made about 1517, by Francisco Lucas, of Saragossa, Spain, who contrived a set of letters carved in thin tablets of wood. This was brought to Italy about 1575 and improved by Rampansetto of Rome, who used larger blocks, but in-cut instead of raised. Both systems failed because of the difficulty of reading them. In 1651, George Harsdorffer of Nuremberg revived the classical method of a wax-covered tablet in which letters could be cut with a stylus. About 1676, Padre Terzi devised a kind of cipher code based on a system of dots 16 enclosed in square and other figures and also an arrangement of knots tied in strings. Jacques Bernouilli is said to have used this system, as well as incised tablets, in teaching a blind child to read in Geneva in 1711.

“In 1640, Pierre Moreau, a notary of Paris, had brought out a system of movable raised letters in lead, and about the same time Scholberger, of Königsberg, used letters made of tin, and a century later, Le Notre du Puisseau, who lived near Paris, cast metal letters. These systems suffered from two main defects; the letters were rough to the touch and they were hard to make out.

“Other devices were employed. For example, Maria Theresa von Paradis, who did so much to encourage Haüy was instructed by the aid of pins stuck in cushions. In his Lettre sur les Aveugles Diderot tells of a blind woman, Mlle de Salignac, born in 1741, who had been taught to read from letters cut out of paper.

“When Valentin Haüy founded his school in Paris in 1784, his pupil Lesueur found by accident that he could feel the outlines of an “0” which had been strongly impressed on a sheet of paper. Valentin Haüy at once set about embossing books and experimented with certain types. Embossed literature had been invented, but the old difficulty of a script which could be easily read by touch remained. It was the evolution of this script by Louis Braille in 1829 which completed the system under which the blind read to-day.

“It was not, however, until some fifty years later that the Braille system was universally adopted and, in the mean time, numerous other forms of embossed type were devised on the continent of Europe, in Great Britain and in America. Perhaps the chief of these were the systems of James Gall of Edinburgh, whose works were the first to appear in relief type in the English language; of John Alston of Glasgow and of Dr. Moon of Brighton.”

THE GENESIS OF BRAILLE §

One of the members of the conferences which Unesco convened to advise on the rationalization of Braille, was Mr. Pierre Henri, himself blind and holder of the same post in the same school which Louis Braille filled a century earlier. He has made the life and work of his famous predecessor his special study, and in connection with Unesco’s services in this field, contributed an article to Cahiers Français d’Information, Paris. It is an admirable account of the man and of the evolution of his system; and we are deeply indebted to Mr. Henri and the publishers for their courteous permission to quote it extensively here.

“When Valentin Haüy opened the first of all […]

schools for the blind in Paris in 1784, his foremost concern was to discover some way of teaching his pupils to read. The story goes that the solution to this problem was provided by Lesueur, the blind beggar-lad whom Haüy found in a doorway of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and took home with him, and who would only submit to education on condition that his purse was filled everyday by his master.

“We are told that one day, when Lesueur was fumbling among some papers on a table, he came across an invitation card, printed in embossed letters which stood out in such high relief that the blind boy could trace each one separately with his finger.

“This, it is said, sufficed to give Valentin Haüy the notion that the blind could be taught to read by means of ordinary large type, printed in relief. I, myself, am inclined to wonder whether he did not get the idea from an Addendum to the then recent reprint (1783) of Diderot’s celebrated Lettre sur les Aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient, in which the author related that a Parisian printer, Prault, had produced a book printed in relief for the use of a distinguished blind girl, Mlle de Salignac, who had died at an early age some twenty years before.

“But that is a minor point of history; whatever may be the truth of the matter, it was by this somewhat primitive method that, for more than forty years the pupils of the school founded by Haüy had to acquire their education. Tests being virtually unknown in those days, no information has comedown to us as to how many words a minute the blind children could read in this way. But everything goes to suggest that the reading of the big, relief-printed folios of those heroic days must have been very slow work. Writing was an even more laborious affair, since the only way in which the pupils could express their ideas was by setting them up in type.

“The school founded by Haüy was nationalized by the Constituent Assembly and under the Restoration it received the title of Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles de Paris. In 1821, it was visited by a curious personage, Charles Marie Barbier de la Serre, a former Captain of Artillery. Barbier was one of those Utopian idealists who scatter ideas far and wide — ideas which, when modified, stabilized and reduced to practical proportions, often serve as the basis for some valuable invention. Some ten years previously, he had worked out a system of “night writing”, which he claimed for instance, would enable soldiers in the field to communicate with each other during the hours of darkness.

“Barbier’s system was based on a table of 36 squares, each relating to a speech sound. Each sound on the board was represented by a parallelogram of dots. The number of dots in its left-hand column indicated the position of the horizontal line on the board where the sound in question was represented, while the number of dots in the right-hand column indicated the position of the sound in that line.

“Thus “Q”, for example, would be expressed by a symbol containing four dots in its left-hand column and three in its right.

“This was a system only for conveying sounds, for Barbier maintained that for the masses, at any rate, spelling was a superfluous refinement. What gave him the idea of applying his invention to the blind? This is another historical question which we cannot solve here. In any case, despite official scepticism, the method seems to have been fairly popular with the pupils of the Royal Institution. It would probably be read more rapidly than the ordinary raised print of the Valentin Haüy system; and it could be written too, for Barbier devised a metal frame which enabled his signs to be stamped in relief on paper with a pointed instrument. But it was not an altogether satisfactory system.

“In 1819, two years before Barbier submitted his invention to the Royal Institution, a blind boy named Louis Braille had entered it as a pupil. Born on the 4th February, 1809, ℹ he was the son of a saddler at Coupvray, a prosperous village in the district of Meaux. He lost his sight as the result of an accident when he was three years old. He was in his father’s workshop amusing himself by cutting pieces of leather with a pruning-knife. The knife slipped on the tough leather and entered his eye; and, no doubt as a result of sympathetic ophthalmia, he soon became totally blind in both eyes.

“At the special school, Louis made rapid progress. His outstanding qualities were a capacity for concentration, a methodical mind, and a constructive imagination. He soon distinguished himself. He was first made a monitor and then, when still well under twenty-one years old, became an assistant master. He taught geometry and algebra — his favourite subjects — and music. He was also employed as organist in several Paris churches. Unhappily, tuberculosis undermined his strengh and ultimately caused his death at the early age of forty-three on the 6th of January, 1852. Ill-health often had kept him away from his work and his pupils, whom he loved, and who had a deep veneration for him.

“Louis Braille early mastered the sound-writing system invented by Captain Barbier, which had been accepted by the Institute as a “supplementary method of teaching”. But despite the ingenuity […]

[ingenuity] of the process, it did not satisfy young Braille. Contemporary evidence shows that others were equally dissatisfied with it, and were experimenting with modifications. But Braille alone had the mental gifts to design a really brilliant invention. By 1825 — he was then only sixteen, which gives further proof of his genius — his system of writing for the blind, destined to be universally adopted, was more or less complete.

“The Braille system undoubtedly derives to some extent from Barbier’s sound-writing. Braille, who was the soul of honour, paid tribute to his predecessor in the “Avertissement” which introduces the first edition of his book, where he says: ‘Though we have pointed out the advantages possessed by our process as compared with that of this inventor (Charles Barbier), we must say, in his honour, that it was from his method that we derived the first idea of our own:

“In his second edition he is even more definite: ‘If we are so fortunate as to have been of some service to our companions in misfortune, we shall never weary of repeating that our gratitude is due to Mr. Barbier, who was the first to invent a system of writing by means of dots, for the use of the blind.’

“Charles Barbier, for his part, wrote to Louis Braille on the 31st March, 1833, with a touch of condescension, perhaps, but in the tone of one who realises that he has been outstripped: ‘I have read with great interest the method of writing that you have invented for the special use of persons who are deprived of sight. No praise can be too high for the benevolent feelings which inspire you to render service to those who share your misfortune… It is a fine thing, at your age, to enter upon such a course, and much may be expected from the enlightened sentiments by which you are guided.’

“On the 15th May in the same year, Barbier pays another well-deserved tribute: ‘Mr. Louis Braille, now an Assistant Master at the Royal Institute in Paris, was the first to conceive the happy idea of writing the dots with the aid of a small sliding strip of metal pierced by three parallel lines. The letters take up less space and are easier to read; in both these respects we owe him gratitude for an essential service… Mr. Braille has, moreover, made use of his method in other ways, which are sufficient to ensure its acceptance in an establishment devoted to all that concerns the education of the blind.’

“It has been said that the reason why Louis Braille’s system has proved superior to all other forms of writing for the blind is that it bore the stamp of genius. To put matters more simply, it results from a combination of skill with patient and methodical labour. Braille himself was blind, and only a blind man could have arranged dots in groups which exactly correspond to the requirements of the sense of touch. Reduce the number of dots and the available signs become obviously insufficient; add to their number, and the signs can no longer be covered by the finger-tip, nor so easily read… Mathematically, six dots permit of sixty-four combinations, including the combination zero.

“Braille did not rest content with giving an alphabet to the blind. From the outset, by allotting double or triple values to each sign, he presented a system of musical notation, a set of elementary mathematical symbols and a system of shorthand — so that the blind could satisfy not only their desire for culture, but also their professional requirements.

“Before pronouncing on the value of Braille’s work and criticizing such aspects as his not choosing the simplest combinations for the most frequently used letters (for example the é which though it occurs a great deal in French, is represented by all six dots), one must take two facts into consideration, first, that we are dealing here with a system to be applied to subjects so varied as literature, music and the sciences, and that to alter even one sign without allowing for this multiplicity of standpoints would be to endanger the balance of the entire construction; secondly, that the sign which appears to be the simplest — for instance, the one with the fewest dots — is not necessarily the easiest to read by touch. Modern psychological research has confirmed Braille’s intuition in this respect. It is a mistake to suppose that reading by touch is a strictly analytical process, and that a blind man counts the dots when he reads — just as it is an error to imagine that he counts his steps when walking.

“Despite its many advantages (ability to express music as well as words, simplicity, rapidity of reading and adaptability for writing), the Braille system took a long time to win its place, especially in foreign countries. There has been a great deal of exaggeration regarding the so-called “eclipse of the Braille system” in France itself. It has been asserted, even in print, that for the twenty-five years following its invention in 1829, it was ostracized by the competent officials, who preferred the Valentin Haüy typography — said by that time to have been improved and made more legible — because it was easier for them to read. A few dates will suffice to prove that this is an overstatement. To begin with. it is not quite correct to say that the Braille script was invented in 1829. As already mentioned. there is good reason to believe that its main lines had been laid down by Louis Braille as early as 1825.

Extracts from the Grammaire des Grammaires were printed in Braille in 1827, followed in 1829 by the Grammaire de Noël et Chapsal.

“The reason why 1829 is usually regarded as the year in which Braille made its appearance is that in that year the governors of the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles de Paris arranged for the publication of the first official description of the system, under the title of Method of Writing Words, Music and Plainsong by means of dots, for the use of the Blind and arranged by them — and did so with the definite intention of making it widely known. A second edition of this book, in which the Braille alphabet appears in its final form, was issued in 1837, again under the auspices of the Royal Institution, and simultaneously with a Precis d’Histoire de France, printed unabridged in Braille, in three large volumes. There seems, therefore, to be no justification for saying that the Braille system suffered an eclipse in the very establishment which had witnessed its inception.

“It is, however, true that in 1840, Dufau, the Director of the Institute gave official preference to the system of Roman characters printed in relief, he himself having introduced certain changes, which, he thought, made those characters easier to read by touch. This state of things continued until 1849, when the Institute returned to the printing of Braille. Even during that period, however, the Braille system was not entirely set aside in its original home. For one thing, it remained the official method of printing music, which could not be transcribed by the Dufau system. Moreover, the blind masters and pupils used it for writing their own notes. It has been said that this was done in secret, but that seems unlikely, considering the esteem in which Louis Braille was held by the school governors. Besides, in 1850, Dufau, with a very handsome gesture of intellectual honesty, publicly declared that Braille’s system was better than his own.

“In other countries, Braille took longer to gain its ascendancy. There too it was the blind — the people chiefly concerned — who in the long run insisted upon its adoption.”

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Chapter 3

THE EVOLUTION OF BRAILLE §

Braille was more compact than any system which preceded or followed it. It was outstandingly versatile, equally able to express the languages and scripts of Europe, Asia and Africa, and, as we have seen, readily adaptable to mathematics, musical notation and other purposes. Its main advantages, however, lay in the fact that, unlike the other embossed types, it could be simply and easily written by the blind. Here at last was a remarkably practical script, perfected by a blind man, which opened wide the gates to knowledge, literary enjoyment, the ease to correspond privately with blind friends and the wider opportunities for employment for which the blind longed.

Despite its manifest advantages, the general adoption of Braille was a slow process. As Mr. Henri has shown, even in France official recognition did not come until 1854, two years after Braille’s death. The rest of Europe was equally conservative, the protagonists of other types fighting the new system to the last ditch.

In the end, however, the merits of Braille carried the day; and during the 1860’s and ‘70’s it was adopted throughout Europe in the original form except for such modifications as were required to meet differences in the visual alphabets. By common consent one of the older forms of embossed types has remained in use down to the present time. It too, was the invention of a blind man, Dr. Moon of England, and it fills the special needs of those who lose their sight in middle or late life and whose touch is not sensitive enough for the reading of Braille.

Nevertheless, stormy times for the new script were far from over. The many symmetrical possibilities which lurked within the domino six was the real source of the trouble. Symmetries which helped to link together letters of the same phonetic class, and even symmetries which appealed to the designer just because they were symmetrical. Louis Braille himself yielded to their temptation, and, by doing so, unwittingly prepared the ground for coming controversy. Under his arrangement, the first ten letters of the Roman alphabet were composed solely from the upper four dots. The second ten were formed by adding dot 3 to each of the first ten, the third line is again the same as the first, but this time with dots 3–6 added, while the fourth group of ten was once more the original line with dot 6 added. The fifth group was a repetition of the first line, but formed from the bottom four dots of the domino instead of the top four. The remaining thirteen signs were composed of righthand and bottom dots.

Under the teaching methods of those days, this arrangement aided the teacher a great deal and for the most part he kept firmly to it. But it was the source of three kinds of trouble. Firstly, to a number of educators of the blind Louis Braille’s sequence acquired a special sanctity. Whatever happened, the serial order of the signs must never be changed. But the world had alphabets, the strict sequence of which was rooted in religious tradition, and their order could not be disarranged just to meet the convenience of Braille. We shall find instances in Asia, notably with Arabic and Devanagari scripts, where both Braille and the alphabet concerned adhered to their conventional sequence, with unhappy results.

Secondly, Louis Braille’s symmetry entailed his saddling such frequently recurring letters as N, R and T with the rather more difficult signs while endowing less frequent letters such as K, V and X with the more readable. A number of critics regarded this as a weakness, and it led to their considering rearrangements of the signs and to the establishment of such seriously divergent systems as “American Braille” and “German Braille”, based on the principle of allotting the signs with the fewest dots to the most frequently recurring letters.

Thirdly, the original symmetry inspired experiments in ultra-symmetry, of which we give an example here. From the point of view of the modern Braille reader the account of the basis of their system given by its authors, Messrs. Knowles and Garthwaite, would scarcely be worth recording were it not for the fact that it was taken seriously at the time — to such an extent, indeed, that it rent Braille in India asunder for fifty years.

Their system, issued in 1901, was designed as a uniform one for “All Oriental Languages”. In explaining it they said:⁠—

“In this arrangement the leading ideas are:

  1. to take the combinations in pairs, and
  2. to take first the pairs with one dot, then those with two, three, four or five dots. Then the one six-dot combination.

“The signs are thus divided into left and right-hand combinations. Those on the right-hand are called right-hand combinations, those on the left are called left-hand combinations.

“We find that there are twenty-eight pairs of combinations, and that there are:⁠—⁠

“There are, besides, three combinations of two dots, which differ only by position, viz., two dots in upper line, two in middle line and two in lower line. Also four combinations which have no pairs, three with four dots, and one with six dots. This exhausts the sixty-three possible combinations.

“Another chessboard-like arrangement of the combinations is also shown… From this it will be seen that the combinations may be arranged in sets of four, the two upper in each sub-division-square being pairs, and the two lower ones being these pairs turned upside down, or the lower two combinations being the complementary combinations of the upper.

“The combinations may be considered also with reference to the lines on which the dots are placed, and we have the following:

“There are fifteen combinations with only upper, middle, or upper and middle dots. Three have upper dots only, three middle dots only.

“There are thirty-six combinations having both upper and lower dots. Of these twenty-seven also have middle dots, nine have no middle dots.

“There are twelve combinations with middle and lower, or only lower dots. Of these three have lower dots only…”

Messrs. Knowles and Garthwaite described this maze as “the principle of reversal of pairs”. Curiously enough, however, the authors were apparently not entirely clear as to what purpose this elaborate symmetry served, for they added:⁠—

“It cannot be too strongly impressed upon anyone who may read these notes, that it is not at all necessary, or even advisable, that an attempt should be made to set before the uneducated pupil the explanation, or even a statement, of the classifications or the reasons for the signs as given here”.

The British and Foreign Bible Society, in publishing the manual, cautiously appended the note:⁠— “It must be understood that the Society is not responsible for all the opinions of its advocates”.

In those days educators of the blind, and not the blind readers, made most of the decisions on matters of embossed type. They stressed symmetry because it not only made teaching simpler, but also because they believed it helped the blind reader more than was actually the case. The blind pupil speedily ceased to concern his mind with the composition of the signs, quickly associating a form, felt by the finger, with a sound, just as the sighted child similarly associated a visual form. Learning the signs is neither a difficult nor a lengthy process, and once passed, the reader looks at Braille signs from only one point of view — are they difficult or easy to read? If you ask him what dots compose a certain letter, or what is its position in the original sequence, he will almost certainly hesitate and make a mental effort before he answers.

The blind reader is conservative by nature. Once he has learnt to associate with Braille signs particular sound values, he dislikes change, whether for his own language or when he chooses to learn a foreign one, beyond, of course, accustoming himself to the normal adjustment as between one tongue and another.

Under modern teaching methods, Braille symmetry has lost its old status. The child no longer begins his literary education by learning his alphabet “A, B, C” fashion, but starts with simple words, learning to recognize the form of the letters which make them up whatever order they come in. But the teaching methods of the mid-Twentieth Century had not been thought of in the Nineteenth, nor had the blind for the most part been able to formulate views on Braille based on experience. Indeed, it seems that the era of experiment was inevitable, made a little more protracted perhaps by the readiness with which the system lent itself to re-designing.

BRAILLE IN BRITAIN §

While it is generally held that Braille was introduced into Britain by an able blind man, Dr. Thomas R. Armitage, the Royal London Society for Teaching and Training the Blind (London) states in its Annual Report of 1950–1951 that—“The Braille system was first introduced into the School by Professor Hippolyte Van Landagen of the Belgian Institution in 1861 and Braille Musical Notation was introduced in 1877”. Dr. Armitage in his book The Education and Employment of the Blind, written in 1886, expressed the following view of the bitter controversies which had waged over types for the blind during the 1860’s and 1870’s.

“The two main causes of this lamentable state of things seemed to be that inventors of systems and managers of institutions generally had their sight, and, misled by this sense, they could not understand or enter into the real wants of the blind. It is a curious and instructive fact that […]

the two systems which are now most in favour with the blind themselves and which have most vitality in them, are due to two blind men, Mr. Braille and Dr. Moon… Among the more intelligent of the blind the opinion has long been gaining ground that for any good results to be obtained, the question must not be settled FOR the blind, but BY the blind themselves… The relative merits of the various methods of education through the sense of touch should be decided by those and those only who have to rely upon this sense.” Dr. Armitage had put this policy into effect in 1868 when he collected a group of intelligent and educated blind men who studied the various British types—the Bible at that time was printed in no fewer than five systems. They examined Braille and considered the ways in which it might be adapted to English and came to the sound decision that the interests of the blind would be best served by accepting Braille as being unquestionably superior and by copying the French arrangement exactly as it stood. This committee founded the British and Foreign Blind Association, later renamed the National Institute for the Blind, a body which has played no small part in the pioneering and printing of Braille for use throughout the world. Under its influence Braille soon became the educational medium of the British blind.

BRAILLE IN AMERICA §

Braille did not fare so well in America. One group took the French arrangement as Britain had done. Another modified many of the signs on the principle of giving those with the fewest dots to the most frequently recurring letters; while a third group made an extremely radical change, turning the axis of the Braille rectangle from the vertical to the horizontal. Its signs were two dots high and from two to four dots wide.

All three systems had their virtues. The first, with the exception noted in the following paragraph, maintained uniformity of script with England, France and with the Brailles of most of the European countries. The second (American Braille) achieved economy of dots and thereby eased the task of writing under the old dot by dot method. The last (New York Point) effected a reduction in space and claimed greater ease of reading. These individual virtues, however, were heavily outweighed by the catastrophe of having three different scripts for the English-speaking world and within the United States, a situation which would be paralleled if one third of sighted Americans to-day spelt WASHINGTON in the ordinary English way; another third spelt it PXFTOQWSAQ; and the remainder expressed it thus: K H J S A X I M V X

The exception, noted above, is recorded in Dr. Armitage’s book, he says:⁠—“The little Braille that has been used in America has not been pure Braille, for W has been placed in its regular position in the alphabet as the 23rd letter, whereas in the French Braille X is the 23rd letter, and this position is universally adhered to in Europe. The alteration in position adopted by the Americans necessitated the change of meaning in the last four signs in the alphabet, French X becoming W; French Y becoming X; French Z becoming Y and the French ç becoming Z. It is easy to understand what confusion this small change in the position of W has caused.

School textbooks, the Bible and all Braille works had to be expensively printed three times over. The blind, educated in one school, could not exchange letters with those of another. Everyone recognized the futility of this unhappy state of things, but Done would give way; and so matters went on for thirty or forty years. Only in 1918, after a committee had laboured for fifteen years was unity restored. This committee agreed to a return to the original French Braille, a decision which brought uniformity not only within the United States, but also between it and Europe.

Before the introduction of Braille into America, considerable experiment had been made in that country in other forms of embossing. The following excerpt is taken from the Proceedings of the American Association of Workers for the Blind, 1933:⁠—

“The first book embossed in this country was the Gospel of Mark, printed in connection with the Philadelphia school. As this type was not legible, the effort to produce a legible type resulted next in the development of the “Philadelphia Line Type” and the “Boston Line Type”. Experience and experimentation with many varieties of line type, conducted here and abroad, led to the ultimate adoption of a dot type. Without doubt, William B. Wait’s experiments at the New York Institute did more than any others to establish the fact that a dot type is not only serviceable for classroom instruction but more legible than any form of line type that has been devised.” While the American decision of 1918 restored uniformity between the uncontracted Braille of Europe and America, a further fourteen years passed before, in 1932, common agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States established “Standard English Braille” as the contracted form for everyday use throughout the English-speaking world.

BRAILLE IN GERMANY §

At a conference in Vienna in 1873, some years after Germany had adopted the original French Braille, it was decided to introduce a German adaptation in which the letters recurring most frequently in German were given the simplest signs. It will be noted from the report of a conference in Berlin in 1879, that this divergence lasted only six years. We quote the report in some detail because both the reasons which prompted the experiment and the considerations which led to a return to the original French signs have been common to most Braille divergences whether in the Old World or the New. A wider knowledge of this phase of trial and error during the latter half of last Century may be a help both in remedying the remaining disunities and in preventing the growth of new ones.

“Opening this Conference Director Mecker (Duren) expressed great disappointment at the continued disagreement between the supporters of the original Braille and those of the new German Braille. He had taken a vote from thirty-three schools; nineteen of these supported the original Braille (fourteen insisted on keeping it, whatever happened) and ten voted for the new German Braille.

“He quoted a letter from the Director of the St. Marie School, the father of the new German Braille alphabet, who stated that although he was the proposer of the new system at the Congress in Vienna six years before, he was now most anxious that some agreement should be reached, because the blind were suffering so greatly from the discord which it had created. He was prepared, therefore, to submit to the decision of the present Berlin Congress. His first objection to the French Braille system had been that figures such as 4 and 6, 5 and 9, 8 and 0 could easily be confused and it had therefore been his intention to introduce the simplest possible signs for these figures, making such confusion impossible. Added to this was of course the idea of giving the simplest possible signs to those “letters which recurred most frequently in the German language. However, his proposals had been overruled and considered unimportant, in view of which he was fully prepared to withdraw the project of a new German Braille. Moreover, he had had the Report of the British and Foreign Blind Association, London, according to which the British had, as a result of the decision taken at. the Paris International Congress of 1878, agreed to French Braille as an international system with contractions.

“Director Mecker then quoted a letter from Dr. Armitage of London, as follows:⁠—‘You have asked me to give you my opinion regarding the question of whether Germany should use the old or the new Braille system. I am happy to reply to this, especially as the whole question was thoroughly studied by our Blind Association a few years ago in respect of the comparison between Braille and the New York system. At that time we felt that although the New York system meant a gain of space of 22%, the general losses would be regrettable, above all in respect to music. In view of this we decided to retain the old Braille. There are other reasons. The new German Braille does not offer any gain of space and the increase of speed does not appear of sufficient importance to override the overall losses. Such experiments are often made when a new method of teaching is being introduced. I, myself, made a similar experiment with the English language ten years ago, but was soon convinced that it would be far better for the English blind to adhere to the same writing and printing methods adopted by the blind of other countries, even if the writing should take a little longer. Added to this is the fact that we, in England, employ many contractions, mainly consisting of groups of letters which appear frequently in our language, which are represented by one sign. If the Braille system becomes general in Germany, such contractions will no doubt also be introduced, which will result in the proportion of frequency of recurrence of such letters being considerably altered.’

“Director Mecker concluded, ‘Our only possible decision can be to agree upon the original Braille system, even if we were convinced that the new German Braille would have some internal advantage.’

He then moved that although:⁠—
The German method, as compared with French Braille, had the advantage of writing rapidity (approx. 15 %), reading rapidity (approx. 5 %) and space economy (approx. 5 %);
it had the disadvantages:⁠—
that it had no figure signs which could be employed internationally and was not at all suitable for writing music;
that it was not universal in character and could not be applied to any other language;
that all works of German literature printed in this method would have difficulty in finding a market outside Germany, and that foreign literary works printed in Braille would become inaccessible to those persons practising the German method;
that moreover, no books existed as yet, printed in this German system;
while French Braille, adapted to German had the merits:⁠—
that the original Braille system had figure signs usable everywhere, and was most suitable for writing music;

that in orthography it could be adapted to every language;
that after many years of use, it had proved successful everywhere and wherever any other system had appeared, offering saving of time and space, as did the German system, the system Cordon in France and New York Point in America, it had soon been dethroned;
that in this system countless works of literature in many languages, including numerous German works, as well as a great number of musical scores were already printed; and that the original Braille system was in use in all European countries.

“It was therefore decided that:⁠—
The German Braille System be rejected and the French Braille System be accepted.”

“Director Meyer (England) said he had been present at the Paris Congress. He pointed out that the Universal Braille was now in use from the north of England to the Eastern Mediterranean and that he had just received a fine example of Braille writing from Mexico. He appealed to those present to follow the principle of unity, not for Germany to isolate herself from the rest.

“The resolution was then put to the vote; thirty-five voted in favour, while twenty-seven abstained.

“Director Meyer said they were fortunate in having among them a number of blind persons who had exercised their votes, saying that they were the most competent people to judge this matter. It was noted that of the twelve blind members present, nine had voted for the original French Braille, three abstaining from voting.”

THE FIRST PROPOSAL FOR INTERNATIONAL BRAILLE §

The tendencies in America and Germany to re-arrange the Braille alphabet, allotting different values to the symbols gave rise to a vigorous discussion at the International Congress on Work for the Blind which took place in Paris in 1878. The Congress decided, firstly, that Braille was incontestably superior to all other forms of embossed type and, secondly, that it should be adopted as the universal script for all the blind with the values of its symbols unaltered from those of the original French. We have extracted the following from the proceedings:⁠—

“Mr. Smith of Boston, in a carefully studied memorandum, proposed to modify the Braille system, by choosing signs most quickly formed for the letters which occurred most frequently in each language. This idea, he was told, had already been applied without success, and the congress felt that although the care and the calculation which Mr. Smith had given to the study lent weight to his argument and perhaps would convince those who had doubts, it did not persuade those who used it. The Congress considered that the conclusions come to by Mr. Smith were in opposition to the desire for unification which had brought about the present meeting. As a result, though appreciating the hard work and time which Mr. Smith had given to his study, the Congress declared that they would not adopt his conclusions.

“Mr. Koechlin, Director of a school for the blind in Ilzach, read a note to the Congress on the unification of the system. This blind authority had experimented with the relief types most in use and had no hesitation in pronouncing the Braille system as the best. The Commission thanked Mr. Koechlin for his excellent work and declared his expert opinion to be the general view.

“Speaking on behalf of a number of English workers for the blind, Mr. Johnson said that in spite of certain advantages which he recognized in the Braille system, it should not be adopted to the exclusion of all other systems, which had rendered excellent service to the blind. The Braille system was conventional and special, separating the blind from the seeing, and he and his friends thought that first place should be given to the consideration of a type in raised Roman letters. A large number of books were published in this type; the Moon system was derived from it and much appreciated by those who used it. In England it was feared that if too great importance were placed on unification, it would render obsolete the numerous and costly works in raised Roman and Moon types.

“Mr. Meyer said that none of the members of the Commission would ignore the great service given by the embossed books in Roman type and its derivatives from London, Warcester, Philadelphia, Vienna and elsewhere. Nobody wished to discredit these numerous works but only to consider the special suitability of the writing and printing invented by Braille as applied to orthography, to stenography, to mathematics and to music. He proposed that, before its incontestable advantages, it was impossible not to proclaim the superiority of this system invented by the blind French teacher.

“Mr. Meyer continued, ‘We have studied with care numerous documents sent to us. We have examined successively all the systems, and have weighed their merits. As the Braille system has been adopted by Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Holland, partly in England, Italy and even Egypt, we must recognize that the trend of the world is towards Braille.

“‘The Commission proposes that you should adopt the existing Braille as it stands because it embraces both reading and writing and because […]

it fulfills the two principal needs of the intelligence of mankind. It is not enough for the blind man to know how to read, it is also necessary that he should be able to convey his thoughts by writing and this he can only do by writing Braille… In proposing the adoption of the Braille system we would make it clear that the unmodified system of Braille is understood, the French Braille and none other.’

“M. le Président… ‘Will those who are of the opinion that the present Braille system unaltered represents the best method for teaching the blind reading and writing and that there is need for it to be used universally until a better method is discovered, please raise their hands?’ The Congress pronounced itself by a large majority in favour of the “generalisation" of the existing Braille system.” Even so, suggestions for changing the system continued to be made, and twice again at succeeding international Congresses — Brussells in 1902 and Cairo in 1911 — the Paris policy was re-considered and convincingly reaffirmed. While this constituted the authoritative opinion of the responsible bodies in blind welfare, it was not binding on individual countries; and it is probable that, as in those days co-ordination of blind welfare was almost non-existent, many workers for the blind remained unaware that any such policy had been laid down. Nevertheless, full European uniformity in uncontracted Braille was achieved in due course.