The Qatar 2022 World Cup fever left us with a lot of colorful situations that caught the attention of even those who they are not soccer fans. One of these situations is that of the child Sebastián Filaromo, a small Venezuelan with a visual disability who adapted the Panini album with the Braille method in order to complete it.
The scenery is incredible from where you look at it. The ability of a person suffering from the loss of one of his senses and the joy with which he expresses being able to keep up with his heroes, whom he hears and cannot see, causes many to introspect and be thankful that they are completely healed. .
While other more curious wonder: Who came up with the Braille method? Since when has this mechanism existed with which millions of blind people can read and write to communicate?
Figures from international organizations show that approximately 19 percent of people in the world have visual impairment so severe as to require assistance to carry out certain activities. Therefore, the Braille method is a fundamental tool in their lives.
Where does the Braille method come from?
He was born from an accident in France in 1814. Little Louis Braille, barely 3 years old at the time, became blind after accompanying his father in his workshop. He suffered a blow with a sharp object that caused him to lose one eye and then the infection spread to the other.
At the age of seven, his parents sent him to the local school, learning by recitation, but without the ability to read or write.
But life took another turn when he won a scholarship to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in France, at the age of 10. It was 1819 and a new era was opening for the visually impaired in the world.
Braille, and the other young people of the French institute, studied with books printed with raised letters. But by 1821, a French army captain, Charles Barbier, demonstrated a reading system used in the field to read orders in the dark.
The method was to use raised dots and dashes. With this, it was possible to avoid lighting a fire for the reading, protecting oneself from the enemy.
However, the same Braille, already 15 years old, perfected the system presented by Barbier, reducing the dots in relief, leaving dJust the right size to feel with your fingertip. The Braille system forms symbols for each letter or number by combining 6 dots.
The dots that are in relief represent a letter or sign of writing in visual characters: the size and distribution of the 6 dots form the Generator Sign, which allows 64 combinations.
