Design is in

Fixing Braille printing plates

Languages are one of the oldest forms of abstraction, and ‘design’. Culture, society, and the available tools have designed every language collectively. Languages have developed and changed over hundreds, or thousands of years. One unique language, developed around 200 years ago, for a very specific need, is Braille. 

Braille was developed by Louis Braille, in the 1820s, in Paris. He had turned blind at 3, and developed a unique system while teaching at the blind school in Paris. Braille developed a code using one or more raised dots in a cell three dots high, and two dots wide. He was also an accomplished musician, and developed an application of his system for musical notation. In 1916 schools for the blind in the USA officially adopted Braille. In the 1960s, Braille seemed to be declining in popularity, as many people saw it as ‘old-fashioned’. However, children who had been trained in Braille, had much better chances of getting employment later on. The 1990s saw a revivial of Braille, partly due to computer devices and software, which enabled many blind people to read and write. 

The design of Braille is such that it appears big. Braille shortens many word and letter combinations by a system of rules called ‘grades’. One page of printed material will give 2-3 pages of Braille. Braille uses a lot of white space around letters. For this reason, the size of Braille paper is large, 11 x 11.5 inches, a standard paragraph indent is only two pages, and lines are not left between paragraphs. Braille requires unique rules of typography. 

There are no photocopy machines for Braille, but there are Braille embossers, ruggedly built to punch thousands of dots accurately in sheets of paper. Braille is embossed on both sides of paper simultaneously, aligned so that both sides are readable. 

When printing Braille documents, the challenge lies in representing illustrations, maps and images, which need tactile representation. Sight absorbs images as a whole, but touch acquires information in pieces. Most drawings and graphs have to carefully re-design for fingertips. The main principle is simplicity; all unnecessary details must be eliminated. Consistency is crucial, the appropriate symbols to represent rivers, boundaries, graph curves etc, must follow consistent guidelines. 

In India, the National Association for the Blind produces and prints books in English and the state languages. In India, Braille has been adapted for the numerous local languages. Indian languages are essentially phonetic in nature, which further enables Braille to be used as a script for writing text in different Indian languages. India has made a recommendation to UNESCO to consider a standard universal system for Braille, based on a phonetic representation of sounds using the six-dot system. Read more on standard English Braille. 

Producing Braille materials is essential, as having information when you want, at your choice of speed, and in a format you can write in, makes anyone feel more at home in the world. 

By Armeen Kapadia