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Louis Braille

INVENTOR OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE
FOR THE BLIND

A Childhood Accident

9 Louis Braille was the youngest of four siblings growing
This statue of Louis Braille as a child up in a small town in France when, at age three, Louis
is in Bermuda’s Garden of the Blind. was blinded in an accident. He was playing with an awl,
a sharp tool that can poke holes in leather, and he struck
himself in the eye. The injury became infected, and by
the time Louis was five years old, he was completely
blind in both eyes.

A Need for Books

10 Louis’s parents sent him to the local school with the
other children. Young Louis was able to keep up with his
schoolwork despite his blindness. When he was 10 years
old, he was awarded a scholarship at the Royal Institute
for Blind Youth in Paris. (The institute still exists today,
and is called the National Institute for Blind Youth.)

11 At the institute, children were expected to learn how
to read using paper embossed with letters that look like
the ones you are reading now, only with raised lines. It
was a slow process to read this way, and the books were

large and bulky, fragile, and expensive. For the entire
school, there were only three books. In addition, it was
impossible for children to write anything that they would
be able to read later.

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