👨🏼‍🦯 World BRAILLE Day 2025 – Jan 4

World BRAILLE Day ORIGIN & HISTORY

Braille is recognized as a day that helps people who are blind or visually impaired use a system that helps in communication. The United Nations established this day as a way to commemorate Louis Braille’s significant contribution to helping those in need of being able to read & write through using his clever system called braille.

Louis Braille became blind at the age of 3 during an accident where he was playing with his father’s awl. He then went on to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth on a scholarship at age 10. There he developed this system using six raised dots with none other than an awl responsible for his blindness. He perfected the design by the time he was 15 which later became known as braille in 1824.

This made it possible for fingertips to identify the shaping of the dots to communicate words in one complete pass. He did become recognized for his raised coding but never got to see it actually in use and be taught. His impact would be felt worldwide.

US schools for the blind adopt braille in 1916 and the Royal Institute he attended started using braille two years after his death in 1952 from tuberculosis. And it was because of this, that the UN General Assembly voted in 2018 to establish and recognize World BRAILLE Day as an international holiday.

HOW to Celebrate & Observe World BRAILLE Day?

Not sure how to LOVE the day? We’ve got a few interesting ideas to consider that may help get you started.

Here are some activities that you can do on World BRAILLE Day!

💙 HELP out a child

Give a gift of braille to a blind or visually impaired child in need. These can be a toy, a learning device, or even a braille book.

💙 RAISE social awareness

Use social media posts with the hashtag #NationalBRAILLEDay to support the importance of celebrating, promoting, and sharing with the world why you ❤️ National BRAILLE Day and the significance of using braille.

💙 LEARN to read Braille

It’s believed that only 10% of the blind can actually read braille – even less so for musicians who can’t see. Who knows … you might make a difference in someone’s life.

💙 Ink yourself a TATTOO in Braille

Even a short word like “Love” is a simple tattoo to get. Others are quite intricate even involving raised beads inserted beneath the skin. We’re not quite ready for that — you might want to settle for one of the many temporary tattoos 🙂

LEARN more about Louis Braille

SIX Fun Facts you never knew about World BRAILLE Day

1. The inventor of braille wasn’t born blind. He would always play in his father’s leather workshop. In mimicking his dad, the tool he was using slipped and punctured his eye. The infection subsequently spread to the other eye.
2. The Braille alphabet system consists of raised dots arranged in cells, with each cell representing a letter or a combination of letters.
3. A noblewoman heard of Louis’ plight and paid to send him off to the school for the blind.
4. Charles Barbier, a retired army captain, once visited Louis’ school and spoke of a method he created with 12 raised dots that infantrymen could read communique on the battlefield at night. This impressed him and later became the inspiration for his master linguistic plan.
5. One of the reasons that it took SO LONG for his language system to be accepted was because the school’s administrators were too worried that it would enable the students so much that they would no longer have need of their teachers and become obsolete.
6. The French ultimately reburied Louis’ at the Panthéon in Paris. So proud of their native son, the village he was from was determined to keep his hands because of his achievement.

Famous PEOPLE also born on January 4th

• Sir Isaac Pitman

  English teacher and inventor of the Pitman Stenographic Shorthand. Born 1813.

• Louis Braille

  French educator and inventor of braille, a system of reading and writing for the blind. Born 1809.

• Jacob Grimm

  Philosopher, folklorist, and editor of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Born 1785.

• Sterling Holloway

  Disney voice actor from Cedartown, Georgia USA who famously portrayed Winnie the Pooh, and characters from the Jungle Book, Alice in Wonderland, Aristocats, and more. Born 1905.

Future DATES for World BRAILLE Day

Braille FAQ

Do you need to be totally blind in order to receive services?

• No, any amount of vision loss that can’t be corrected by glasses or affects your daily standard of living might be eligible for services at establishments for the blind. Many times the services are FREE.

What type of materials or programs are available for the sight-impaired?

• Frequently child development, youth, and adult programs are available as well as free digital book machines, downloadable books, and telephone readers.

Is Braille a language?

• No, it’s actually a method of writing language that can be translated into many languages including Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese, Arabic, etc.

Is there more than one type of Braille?

• Yes, most children learn the uncontracted braille version where everything is spelled out. As time goes on, you may want to learn the contracted version which is a sort of shorthand where you get to use contractions, etc.

The Importance of World BRAILLE Day

Awareness of programs and resources is always beneficial as a human right. We’ve all done it many times before — closed our eyes and “pretended” to be blind for a moment or wondered how awful it would be like. But until you know someone who has gone through this, it’s really hard to truly imagine the blurriness, colors fading, or perhaps just making out shapes.

Louis Braille perfected a procedure already in place which gave more hope to a segment of the population. He used a tool that took his sight and honed out a script that would become a tool in its own right.

Do you know anyone who is BLIND?