This year people around the world are commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of Louis Braille.
As an adolescent--a student at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles--Louis Braille developed and published the braille code. He thus made it possible, for the first time, for blind people to read and write with relative ease. There is useful information on Louis Braille and his system of raised dots at the websites of, among other organizations, the National Braille Press, the American Printing House for the Blind, and the National Federation of the Blind.
The Braille Commemorative Coin will be released by the United States Mint on Thursday, March 26. Sale of the coin can raise as much as eight million dollars for braille literacy programs.
Incidentally, the National Federation of the Blind is committed to creating in the Jacobus tenBroek Library a comprehensive research collection on non-medical aspects of blindness--in print, in Braille, or in any other format, I invite you to keep me informed of anything passing through your hands that might belong here.
Source: Edward T. Morman, MSLS, PhD
Director, Jacobus tenBroek Library
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND JERNIGAN INSTITUTE
1800 Johnson Street Baltimore MD 21230
410.659.9314 x2225
410.685.2349 (fax)
