World Braille Day is celebrated every year on January 4th because it is Louis Braille’s birthday – the inventor of braille.

Louis was born in 1809 in France. He lost his sight at a young age and was sent to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth. It was at the Institute in 1821 that Louis was first introduced to the idea of using a coded system of raised dots.

Charles Barbier, a captain in Napoleon’s army, visited the school to demonstrate his ‘night writing’. This was a tactile system designed for soldiers to send and receive messages at night without speaking. It used raised dots and dashes rather than actual letters.

Louis quickly realised how useful this system could be, but thought it was too complicated. When he was just 15 years old, he created the system we know today as braille based on a system of writing developed by Charles Barbier.

Over the years braille was tweaked to make it easier to read, and now it’s used all over the world and is being incorporated in to so many new and exciting products.

Did you know we can manufacture braille labels? We have the in house capabilities to incorporate braille to many of our products through the means of embossing and high build printing.