Literacy Changes Lives

Perkins invites you to see how braille literacy can make a difference in your life or in the life of someone you know. Click on the pages to the right to find resources, fun braille games, tools for building literacy, the history of braille and its inventor, and news and personal stories demonstrating how literacy changes lives.

Even in this age of fast-paced technology, the printed word remains an irreplaceable information sharing vehicle in our society. For the individual who is blind or visually impaired, braille literacy is a powerful communication tool – above and beyond the basic ability to read and write.  The world is accessible by fingertip thanks to the system of touch reading invented by a man born 200 years ago. 

January 4, 2009 marked the 200th anniversary of Louis Braille’s birthday. Blinded in an accident at the age of three, Louis Braille’s insatiable thirst for knowledge led him to develop a system that would forever change the lives of people who are visually impaired. He was only 15 years old when he invented the system we know today as braille.

Thousands of children and adults who are blind or visually impaired depend on braille every day as their means to independent literacy. Among people who are legally blind, those who learn braille as their original reading medium and use it extensively are employed at a significantly higher rate than non-braille users.