
Did you know that when Louis Braille started studying at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, the school had only fourteen accessible books? These books, which were made by embossing the letters of the alphabet used by sighted people on paper, were large, heavy, difficult to use and didn’t contain much information. Louis, frustrated by these limitations, was motivated to invent Braille at the age of only fifteen! For more on the invention of a writing system that revolutionized learning and communication for people with blindness and visual impairment and that is still in use today, watch this great Discovery Network video: The Braille Story
Image: A screenshot from the video showing a hand reading Braille text with an engraved portrait of Louis Braille, a map of France, and Louis' birthdate, 1809