Across all of the writing systems introduced on this website, there are several fundamentals that are universal among them. One of them is, it requires vision, or the sense of sight, to encode the intended message in writing, and to decode the text into the intended message in reading. But what happens when this sense of sight, something we rely on so often, but yet, unknowingly take for granted, is taken away from us, or is simply not there with us from birth?

Reading up on how the blind have been educated across history, it seemed that formal education for the blind is a rather recent development. For a large part of history, the blind generally received no formal education, other than some vocational training to help them assist others in whichever trade they were involved in. As such, they did not learn how to read or write — the trade did not really require them to be literate, and writing systems that exist required something they did not have. Sight.

This all changed around 200 years ago, when Louis Braille, who became blind at the age of 3, developed a code to allow blind people to read efficiently and easily. This led to the invention of the braille alphabet, a system widely used globally today. Such a system required the reader to use their sense of touch to decode the text into the intended message, providing an accessibility option for the blind.

But this was not the first and only writing system that relied on a person’s sense of touch to use. In fact, Braille’s alphabet was inspired from a communication system developed by Charles Barbier de la Serre, a French inventor who was interested in shorthand, and alternative means of writing. But before we get into Barbier’s alphabet that led to the invention of braille, we should also mention how Braille himself was educated.

In 1784, the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles was established in Paris. This marked a crucial turning point in providing a formal education for the blind. Founded by Valentin Haüy, this school was the first in the world to formally educate the blind. This separated it from the other institutions of the time, which largely served as asylums where students were taught manual crafts, but hardly any skills beyond that.

What motivated Haüy to do this? Most sources point towards his lunch in Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1771, where he witnessed blind people being mocked at during a religious street festival. This would have motivated him to open a school with Charles-Michel de l’Épée, who was also known as the “Father of the Deaf” for opening the first free school for the hearing impaired in the 1760s, now called Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris. And in 1784, Haüy received his first student, François Lesueur. Decades later, Braille would study in the school Haüy founded, in 1819.

So what was Haüy’s system of teaching the blind to read? It turned out that that system was rather rudimentary, consisting of raised Latin letters formed by embossing heavy paper. Readers would then trace their fingers over the raised letters to comprehend the text presented to them.

While Haüy’s method was able to teach blind students to read, it did not quite effectively teach them how to write. Haüy’s books were made in a rather complex process, involving wet paper pressed against copper wire. This also did not really allow books to be printed, or more rather, embossed, in large scale due to this process. The books that were made were heavy, fragile, cumbersome, and expensive to obtain. Writing had to be taught through a separate method, where an alphabet made from thick leather was provided, and the student traced the letter’s outline to compose text. But this method only facilitated one-way communication between the blind and the sighted, as only the sighted could see what was traced. Written communication between the blind could not yet be established. Nevertheless, Haüy’s method of education marked a breakthrough in education for the blind by recognising the sense of touch as a means to do sightless reading.

Okay, now back to Barbier. He served in the French artillery from 1784 to 1792, giving him a military background. In 1815, he published a book, Essai sur divers procédés d’expéditive française (Essay on various processes of French expedition), where he remarked that the current writing systems in use posed a barrier in achieving universal literacy, saying that it took people too long to learn, and that people like farmers and craftsmen simply could not dedicate the time to learn it. Also concerned about the lack of accessibility to literacy for people with visual or hearing impairments, Barbier proposed his own writing system that could help achieve universal literacy.

This writing system, like Haüy’s one, was tactile. But instead of using raised Latin letters, this writing system was based on a grid, the conventional alphabet system used a 5 x 5 grid, excluding the letter ‘w’ since French did not have it, and the phonetic system used a 6 x 6 grid. Each letter, or phonetic component, was represented by two numbers — the row number, followed by the column number. These numbers corresponded to the number of raised dots needed to form the letter. These dots, unlike Haüy’s method, were formed by pressing a blunt punch into thick paper so that the letters could be read with the fingers. This was way simpler, and required fewer tools to write, which were a grooved board to imprint, the blunt punch, and a guide for alignment of the dots.

row \ column	1	2	3	4	5
1	a	b	c	d	e
2	f	g	h	i	j
3	k	l	m	n	o
4	p	q	r	s	t
5	u	v	x	y	z

So the letter “Q” would be written in the conventional alphabet as

row \ column	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	a	i	o	u	é	è
2	an	in	on	un	eu	ou
3	b	d	g	j	v	z
4	p	t	k	ch	f	s
5	l	m	n	r	gn	ll
6	oi	oin	ian	ien	ion	ieu

Here, the character for the sound “T” would be written as

This writing system became known as “night writing”, or l’ecriture nocturne. As the name suggests, combined with Barbier’s military background, one might be led to believe that this writing system was created primarily to serve some military function, like reading messages without the need for light, which could give away an army’s current position. But as highlighted in his book, night writing was actually aid universal literacy. But in 1832, he published a pamphlet that defended its functionality in the army and hospitals in addition to educating the blind.

It took some persuasion for the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles to promote Barbier’s invention for use in the school, but in 1821, this method was eventually demonstrated in the school by a student, to fellow students and the board of directors. And this proved a success.

Of course, this system had its limitations, with no symbols for punctuation, numbers, denoting uppercase and lowercase letters, and musical notation. With 4096 possible symbols for the 6 x 6 grid system (a maximum of 12 dots), and 1024 possible symbols for the 5 x 5 grid system (a maximum of 10 dots), there was a considerable amount of missed opportunities to include these missing symbols.

Nevertheless, this proved yet another breakthrough in education for the blind. Blind students were finally able to take notes, and re-read their notes at a later time, and more crucially, written communication between the blind was finally possible. Barbier’s system of night writing provided the fundamental concept, and the necessary tools Braille needed to devise his own more compact and flexible system that could cover the limitations night writing had.

Just 14 years after Barbier’s publication, Braille would publish his book titled Procédé pour écrire les paroles, la musique et le plain-chant au moyen de points, à l’usage des aveugles et disposés pour eux (Process for writing words, music, and plainsong by means of dots, for the use of the blind and arranged for them) in 1829, marking the birth of the Braille alphabet. After a revision in 1837, this would become the system used by the blind to read and write to this very day. Barbier’s success in night writing may be short-lived, but without the core idea, and the tools he invented, education for the blind could have taken a possibly different turn.