Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, a small town about twenty mileseast of Paris, on 4 January 1809. He and his three elder siblings – Monique Catherine (b. 1793), Louis-Simon (b. 1795), and Marie Céline (b. 1797) – lived with their

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Braille studied in Coupvray until the age of ten. Because of his combination of intelligence and diligence, Braille was permitted to attend one of the first schools for blind children in the

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Braille was determined to invent a system of reading and writing that could bridge the gap in communication between the sighted and the blind. In his own words: "Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if

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Through the overwhelming insistence of the blind pupils, Braille's system was finally adopted by the Institute in 1854, two years after his death. The system spread throughout the

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• ^ a: It remains uncertain which eye was actually struck first. Most accounts of Braille's accident omit reference to left or right. Braille's American biographer J. Alvin Kugelmass wrote that it

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• Bickel, Lennard (1989). Triumph Over Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille. Leicester: Ulverscroft. ISBN 978-0708920046. (also large print)
• Farrell, Gabriel (1956). The Story

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Although Braille was admired and respected by his pupils, his writing system was not taught at the Institute during his lifetime. The successors

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