Report
“Non-verbal languages”
“Braille”
Made by student of 2 course
Novikova Alena
2018
1
Plan of the project
1. Time of formation a language and its inventor.
2. Main characteristics of a language.
3. The field of use.
4. The relevance.
2
Introduction
Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. It is
traditionally written with embossed paper. Braille users can read computer screens and
other electronic supports using refreshable braille displays. They can write braille with
the original slate and stylusor type it on a braille writer, such as a portable braille
notetaker or computer that prints with a braille embosser.
Time of formation a language and its inventor
Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result
of a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed a code for the French
alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which
subsequently included musical notation, in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837,
was the first small binary form of writing developed in the modern era.
Braille was based on a tactile military code called night writing, developed by Charles
Barbier in response to Napoleon's demand for a means for soldiers to communicate
silently at night and without a light source. In Barbier's system, sets of 12 embossed dots
encoded 36 different sounds. It proved to be too difficult for soldiers to recognize by
touch and was rejected by the military. In 1821 Barbier visited the Royal Institute for the
Blind in Paris, where he met Louis Braille. Braille identified two major defects of the code:
first, by representing only sounds, the code was unable to render the orthography of the
words; second, the human finger could not encompass the whole 12-dot symbol without
moving, and so could not move rapidly from one symbol to another. Braille's solution was
to use 6-dot cells and to assign a specific pattern to each letter of the alphabet. At first,
Braille was a one-to-one transliteration of French orthography, but soon various
abbreviations, contractions, and even logograms were developed, creating a system
much more like shorthand. The expanded English system, called Grade-2 Braille, was
complete by 1905. For blind readers, Braille is an independent writing system, rather
than a code of printed orthography.
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Main characteristics of a language.
These characters have rectangular blocks called cells that have tiny bumps called raised
dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another.
Since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes for printed writing,
the mappings (sets of character designations) vary from language to language, and even
within one; in English Braille there are three levels of encoding: Grade 1 – a letter-by-
letter transcription used for basic literacy; Grade 2 – an addition of abbreviations and
contractions; and Grade 3 – various non-standardized personal stenography.
Braille cells are not the only thing to appear in braille text. There may be embossed
illustrations and graphs, with the lines either solid or made of series of dots, arrows,
bullets that are larger than braille dots, etc. A full braille cell includes six raised dots
arranged in two columns, each column having three dots. The dot positions are identified
by numbers from one to six. There are 64 possible solutions using zero or more dots. A
cell can be used to represent a letter, number, punctuation mark, or even a word.
The field of use
The current series of Canadian banknotes has a tactile feature consisting of raised dots
that indicate the denomination, allowing bills to be easily identified by blind or low vision
people. It does not use standard braille; rather, the feature uses a system developed in
consultation with blind and low vision Canadians after research indicated that braille was
not sufficiently robust and that not all potential users read braille.
In India there are instances where the parliament acts have been published in braille,
such as The Right to Information Act.
In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires various building
signage to be in braille.
In the United Kingdom, it is required that medicines have the name of the medicine in
Braille on the labeling.
Australia also recently introduced the tactile feature onto their five-dollar banknote
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U.K. September 2017 – On the front of the £10 polymer note (the side with raised print),
there are two clusters of raised dots in the top left hand corner. This tactile feature helps
blind and partially sighted people identify the value of the note.
