El braille es un sistema de lectura y escritura táctil pensado para personas invidentes. Se conoce también como cecografía. Fue ideado por el francés Louis Braille a mediados del siglo XIX, que se quedó ciego debido a un accidente durante su niñez mientras jugaba en el taller de su padre. Cuando tenía 13 años, el director de la Escuela de Ciegos y Sordos de París –donde estudiaba el joven Braille– le pidió que probara un sistema de lecto-escritura táctil inventado por un militar llamado Charles Barbier para transmitir órdenes a puestos de avanzada sin tener necesidad de delatar la posición durante las noches. Louis Braille descubrió al cabo de un tiempo que el sistema era válido y lo reinventó utilizando un sistema de seis puntos. Al cabo de unos años lo simplificó dejándolo en el sistema universalmente conocido y adoptado de 6 puntos. El braille resulta interesante también por tratarse de un sistema de numeración binario que precedió a la aparición de la informática.

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Braille /ˈbreɪl/ is a tactile writing system used by people who are blind or visually impaired. It is traditionally written with embossed paper. Braille-users can read computer screens and other electronic supports thanks to refreshable braille displays. They can write braille with the original slate and stylus or type it on a braille writer, such as a portable braille note-taker, or on a computer that prints with a braille embosser. Braille is named after its creator, Frenchman Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight due to a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of 15, Braille developed his code for the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which subsequently included musical notation, in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837, was the first binary form of writing developed in the modern era. Braille characters are small rectangular blocks called cells that contain tiny palpable bumps called raised dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another. Since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes of printed writing systems, the mappings (sets of character designations) vary from language to language. Furthermore, in English Braille there are three levels of encoding: Grade 1 - a letter-by-letter transcription used for basic literacy; Grade 2 - an addition of abbreviations and contractions; and Grade 3 - various non-standardized personal shorthands. Braille cells are not the only thing to appear in braille text. There may be embossed illustrations and graphs, with the lines either solid or made of series of dots, arrows, bullets that are larger than braille dots, etc. A full Braille cell includes six raised dots arranged in two lateral rows each having three dots. The dot positions are identified by numbers from one through six. 64 solutions are possible from using one or more dots. A single cell can be used to represent an alphabet letter, number, punctuation mark, or even an entire word. In the face of screen-reader software, braille usage has declined. However, braille education remains important for developing reading skills among blind and visually impaired children, and braille literacy correlates with higher employment rates.

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