Braille Printers

Individuals with visual disabilities are said to have devised tactile writing systems for themselves beginning in ancient times, in some cases using common materials like beads or knotted string. In 1786 the first books for the blind were embossed on paper at the Paris Institute for the Young Blind. After that, a variety of systems were proposed, usually by the sighted and invariably proving better for reading than for writing because the systems called for the use of a printing press—the embossing could not be done by hand. In the 1820s Louis Braille, a young blind student at the Institute, devised a dot system that could be written as easily as it could be printed. Braille’s writing was produced with a hand-held point, which was very easy to push into paper. A related system was that of prick type which used small pieces of wood fitted with pinpoints formed in the shape of letters of the alphabet.

Braille’s system was adopted in France in 1854 and spread to other countries. It is one of the major blind writing system around the world, but still not the only one. In its most portable form, a braille kit consists of a slate (a metal guide plate), and a stylus (a blunt metal needle in a wooden handle). There are also braille typewriters, and braille embossing presses of all sizes.

Since reading, writing, and printing systems for the blind cannot be separated in the same way that they are for the sighted, “printing” is here understood very broadly.