Louis Braille was born in 1809 in Coupvray, a village near Paris. His father was a saddler and little Louis liked to play in his father’s workshop. Unfortunately, at the age of three, he accidentally pushed a sharp tool called an awl into his eye. His eye became infected. The infection spread to his other eye, leaving the small child completely blind. Despite this terrible setback, Louis went to the local school and proved an avid pupil. He was a quick learner and a diligent student, despite his disability. At the age of 10, he won a scholarship to the only school for the blind in France, the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.
The school was run by Valentin Haüy, who had developed a system to enable blind people to read. He printed books using regular letters, which were raised and embossed so that the reader could feel their shapes. It was a method designed by sighted people. Blind people found it slow and clumsy, but it worked. The books were large, heavy and expensive to produce, so the school had only a handful.
Blind people were effectively excluded from the world of learning and written communication because the only books they could experience were costly and cumbersome. Louis Braille was determined to find a better way for the blind to read. In 1821, at the age of 12, he learned of a communication system invented by a captain in the French Army, Charles Barbier. If a soldier lit a match at night to read a message, then the light became a target for an enemy sniper, so Barbier devised a code that could be read in the dark. It consisted of dots and dashes raised on thick paper. It was complex and difficult to use, but Braille immediately saw the potential of the idea.
Braille spent many hours experimenting with the concept and developed a much better system by 1824, when he was just 15. He rotated the Barbier design and simplified it. He dropped the dashes and used two standard columns containing a total of six dots. His most important improvement was to create a cell that could be recognised with a single touch of a finger. He published his system in 1829 and printed the first book using it.
After graduation, he stayed at the school as first an assistant and then a teacher. He was a very gifted musician, being an accomplished cellist and organist. He played the organ at many churches in Paris.
Despite his failing health, he continued to refine and develop his system and he incorporated mathematical symbols and musical notation. He was highly respected and admired by pupils and staff at the school, but his new writing system was not adopted by the school or elsewhere. Indeed, the governors of the school and traditional educators opposed it.
He died of consumption in 1852 aged 43. After his death, pupils at the Institute insisted that his system be used there and its advantages became apparent. It spread first through the French-speaking world and gradually beyond. A universal braille code for English was formalised in 1932 and it has now been adopted officially by schools for the blind throughout the world. There are now braille computer terminals and email systems. The braille system has proved an invaluable aid to blind people everywhere.
Thoroughly understand the needs of your customers. Many well-meaning people with sight had tried to help blind people to read using ideas such as raised letters. Louis Braille had a deeper understanding of what it meant to be blind and he used that to devise a superior solution.
Adapt an impractical idea and make it practical. Make an existing idea better. Braille took the Barbier idea, which was clever but ineffective, and transformed it into something pragmatic and realistic.
Be patient. It can take years for great innovations to be acknowledged. Braille’s brilliance was ignored during his lifetime, but it is recognised worldwide today. He is an inspiration to us all.