Greetings All!
Oct happens to be World Blindness Awareness Month, and World Sight Day is October 10th (see the International Agency Prevention of Blindness website at: www.iapb.org) I learned more about this subject by doing my research than I can possibly tell you, and I am eager to share my newfound knowledge with you!
According to the CDC, 12 million of those 40 and over within the U.S. have vision impairment (Including blindness), while over 4 million in that population have uncorrectable vision impairment. This number is projected to double by 2050 due to the aging population (meaning there will be more people with diabetes and other chronic conditions).
World Sight Day aims to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.
The theme for this year’s World Sight Day is “Love Your Eyes, Kids”; it stresses the importance of eye care in young people and in inspiring children to love their eyes. It also serves to help promote elimination of social stigma associated with wearing glasses.
The overall goal is to create a world in which all children have accessible and affordable eyecare. As with everything, early intervention with eye health is crucial. Through the IAPB website parents and caregivers have the opportunity to pledge to love their child’s eyes by having them tested by a professional before October 12th.
Also, through the website children everywhere have a chance to help design the next genre of eyeglasses! There are chances to win cash prizes (for individual schools) and also sunglasses and eyeglasses frames!
The Origins of Braille
Well, if I thought I knew anything about Braille or about its history I was clearly wrong. First of all, I purchased the book "Braille for the Sighted, Grade one and Grade two" (Melvin Melnick) from Amazon for a relatively low cost.
In the book, Melnick explains the history of Braille. To summarize, a system known as “night writing” was devised in Napoleon’s army in the early 1800’s. The French army was losing many soldiers because they read their war information with lamps during the nighttime, and were therefore visible and could easily be killed.
A man in the army named Charles Barbier then decided to devise a special code in order to help prevent the death of French soldiers. Barbier’s code was based on a raised twelve-dot cell that was two dots wide by six dots tall. A letter or sound was represented by the dots or combination of dots within the cell. The problem with this system was that a human fingertip could not feel all of the dots within one cell.
In 1809, also in France, Louis Braille was born. Braille had gone blind at an early age after an accident. The eleven-year-old Louis decided to turn Barbier’s night writing into an efficient communication for blind people. He spent nine years at the National Institute of the Blind in Paris perfecting the raised-dot system.
Braille’s code was now based on six-dot cells rather than twelve. This enabled a fingertip to cover the complete cell and travel quickly from one cell to the next. Over time, Braille became the primary form of written communication for the blind around the world, and the blind could be truly literate for the first time. (See the attached Braille Alphabet card).
Something else I later realized and found interesting is the fact that both Braille and American Sign Language have their origins in France!
Using Braille Practically
Braille is SO much more sophisticated than I ever could have imagined. (I will only give you a few cases and examples here.) Not only are there signs for letters, there are signs for numbers and punctuation. As some of the letter signs and number signs are the same, there are also special signs which indicate what is coming up. For instance, there are special signs which tell that a number follows, a letter follows, italics follow, capital letters follow, etc.
Braille is far more than just stringing letters together. There is something called Contracted Braille, in which there are alphabetic letter signs in which a letter represents an entire word. For instance, the letter ‘c’ may stand for the word ‘can’ and the letter ‘f’ can stand for the word ‘from,’ etc.
Short-Forms use two or three letters to stand for longer words. ‘Alr’ stands for ‘already’, ‘nec’ stands for ‘necessary,’ and ‘ll’ stands for ‘little.’
There are also final-letter contractions: These final letter group signs are part of contracted Braille, which is used in literary Braille to speed up reading and reduce the physical space needed to write texts. For example, certain forms indicate the suffixes ‘sion,’ ‘tion,’ ‘ound,’ ‘less’, ‘ance,’ etc.
Music in Braille
Braille music uses combinations of the same six-dot cell as literary braille. Pitch is represented by the two top rows, while the rhythm is represented by the bottom row. So then, specific keys (C, G, D, etc.) can be identified and so can quarter notes, whole notes, half notes, etc.!
My Own Experience
I have to admit, Braille is new to me. (My only experience with visual deficit in therapy involved ordering large-print text for one of my students). In addition to the Melnick book, I ordered a simple Braille board from Amazon, which includes letters, numbers, and punctuation. Believe me, learning to feel and differentiate the different letters is NOT simple!
I did discover something quite interesting here. I was puzzled as to why the number dots on my board did not match the number dots in the Melnick book. Why did the number one in the book show one dot while the number one on the Braille board showed 5 dots? This was driving me crazy, so I turned to ChatGPT for an answer. Remember me telling you that certain forms indicated that a number was following? Well, in the book, that certain formation of four dots (which looks like a backward L) preceded each of the actual numbers. That is why the numbers did not appear to match! What a relief to have an answer that made sense! Hip, hip, hurray for AI and ChatGPT!
Wikipedia
When I was researching World Site Day, I came across related information on Wikipedia. What surprised me was the presence of an “Appearance” sidebar: this gives the viewer the options of choosing between small, standard, and large text, between standard and wide page width, and between light and dark background! And this is not only for the World Site Day page; ALL Wikipedia pages seem to exhibit this sidebar! What an incredible feature!
Organizations
Consider contributing to one of the many charitable organizations that help restore eyesight throughout the world and/or support those with vision loss. Recently I received some information about HelpMeSee. (In addition to HelpMeSee, there are also SEE International, Orbis International, Royal National Institute of Blind People (UK), as well as MANY others).
One of the HelpMeSee ophthalmologists just returned from Sierra Leone, where there is only one cataract surgeon per 1.3 million people! (There are six such surgeons in Sierra Leone). This doctor restored vision of over 40 people in just a few days.
In Conclusion
I hope you have learned some significant things about vision loss around the world, about World Sight Day, and about Braille. As always, I would appreciate your comments and thoughts! See you next month!
Warmly,
Jessica
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