Celebrated on Louis Braille’s birthday on 4 January every year, World Braille Day is an international day focused on creating awareness on the importance of accessibility and independence for people who are blind or visually impaired.

Louis Braille, born in 1809 in Coupvray, France, founded the system of reading and writing for the visually impaired, based on Charles Barbier’s night writing system. Louis Braille was merely 15 when he devised braille. In 1850, France’s Royal Institute for the Blind Youth adopted a braille curriculum. By 1916, schools around the United States taught braille to their students with blindness.

Many objects that we encounter in our daily life use the braille system to make them more accessible to the visually impaired and blind. Some examples are ATMs, elevators, and calculators.