International Braille Day

abreusoleidy

@abreusoleidy · 17 Jun 2021

International Braille Day

#yoorsjanuary2021

Fun facts on January 4 is World Braille Day to raise awareness of the importance of braille as a means of communication for the full realization of human rights for blind and visually impaired persons.

According to the World Health Organization, there are about 36 million people with blindness in the world, and 216 million suffer from moderate or severe visual impairment. These people are more likely to live in poverty, enjoy worse health and have more difficulties than others in accessing education and employment.

It was in December 2018 that the UN recognized and declared World Braille Day, for its celebration every January 4th, highlighting multilingualism as the basic value of the United Nations.

What is Braille?

It is an alphabetic system in relief designed to represent letters, punctuation marks, numbers, scientific graphics, mathematical symbols and music.

The braille alphabet consists of cells of six points in relief, organized as a matrix of three rows by two columns, which are conventionally numbered from top to bottom and left to right. The presence or absence of points allows the coding of the symbols. With these six points, 64 different combinations are obtained.

There are also special differentiating signs to convert to a capital letter, bastard, number or musical note.

This writing system is used by blind or visually impaired people to read books and publications, and is considered as a means of communication.