What Would You Do If You Were Blind?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 28, 4 December 1950, Page 6

What Would You Do If You Were Blind?

By Stapleton Hall Some weeks ago I read the following extract from a letter from a blind reader: “Two years ago I lost my sight completely. For a week or two I was very depressed and then I took up Braille. What a thrill it was for me when I received my first library book. It was then that I realised what a wonderful new world of reading was open to me through the medium of the library, and I hardly need say that depression is behind me for ever ” Another blind reader wrote: “I do not know what I should do without the books as up to the time I began to receive them I was mentally starved, having been a great reader and student all my life.” These letters pricked my conscience and prompted me to look up an old friend, whom I had somewhat neglected. He has been blind for some years, but in spite of this handicap is a constant reader, and a philosophical thinker. As always, I found him cheerful and uncomplaining, with a book on his table. From him I was able to gather fresh facts about libraries for the blind. But first a word about the founder of the famous Braille system may be of interest.

Louis Bailie was born in 1809 in a French village, and lost his sight through an accident in early childhood. He went to the school for the blind in Paris and he was scarcely 17 when he invented his alphabet, a system of six embossed dots arranged in different positions to indicate the various letters. Towards the end of the 19th century this Braille system with modifications to suit the needs of varying languages, had become generally established as a means of reading for the blind. In schools and institutions in England blind adults and children were taught to read by this method. No attempt had been made, however, to provide blind people with a library where they could borrow books in their own peculiar type.