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Tikumu’s letter

Dear Readers. In recent weeks 1 have written a number of stories about communication — our need to exchange ideas through words, by speaking and listening, by reading and writing. Eyes have played an important part in the development of language. The ancient people used words to describe the tilings in the environment, and drew pictures to represent their ideas. Letter symbols developed from picture writing and words took the place of pictures in a system of writing for people who could see the printed symbols. It was hard for a blind person to learn to read by a system designed for sighted people, as Louis Braille discovered when he became a student at the National Institute for Blind Boys, in Paris. Louis Braille was three years old when he lost his sight as a result of an eye injury'. In some ways he was more fortunate than many blind children of his time, because he lived in a small village where he was able to rpove about freely and do most of the things children of his age like to do. Later he was allowed to sit in classes at the village school, and by listening, he learned more than many older children did through a wider programme. But Louis soon became tired of his passive listening role. He wanted to learn to read , and write. Through the interest of the village Priest who sought the help of an influential landowner in the district, Louis was allowed to go to the National Institute. • He was only 10 when he left his devoted parents and kind friends in the familiar country village, in 1819, but he was drawn by the promise of learning.

Books there were at the Institute, but not many, and they were printed in large raised letters on thick paper. The boys tried to learn to read by running their fingers over the letters. After nearly three years Louis knew he was not going to get far on the path of learning by the methods used at the In« stitute. He longed for a system which would give access to many books written in symbols he could read quickly. What Louis wanted for

himself he wanted for blind people everywhere, and he made up his mind to devise a system of reading and writing for the fingers instead of the eyes. At first, Louis, like experimenters before him, tried to develop a system based on letters of the alphabet, a set of symbols formed especially for the eyes, although he was using raised dots to represent the letters. Through long nights Louis worked trying to produce a system which could be read easily by touch of the finger tips. The system needed to be compact, while still keeping the essentials of a lan-

guage. Time and again his sytem foundered because it became too complicated before it was complete. Only when he put into practice a theory he had long held that the blind must depart from the mechanics of the seeing, did he succeed in placing reading and writing at the finger-tips of the blind. He made a new alphabet using raised dots as symbols to be read with the fingers instead of the eyes, and from it built up a code system that could

be z learned and used as conveniently as the conventional system for sighted people. The Braille system, which included numbers and musical notation, was completed in 1824, but its value was not recognised in his lifetime, nor for more than 100 years after his death in 1842. Nowadays it is being used in many languages, and although science has produced a number of aids for the blind, nothing can take the place of independent reading and writing for some purposes. The blind have special needs as well as special skills in many fields. The Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, with centres in Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, , and Dunedin, caters for the needs of the blind in many ways — occupational training, caring for the aged and sick, counselling and home visiting, training guide dogs, and lending equipment. The Foundation needs a lot of money for its high-ly-specialised work programmes, and it is dependent on the support of the people of New Zealand. The last Saturday in July has become known as Braille Day, when many thousands of New Zealanders collect for the annual appeal run by the Foundation. Next Saturday, somebody will knock on your door and ask for the Braille envelope. You cannot mistake the blackfronted envelope printed in white, with a white stick on the left-hand side. Tikumu

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19800722.2.90.4

Bibliographic details

Press, 22 July 1980, Page 14

Word Count
770

Tikumu’s letter Press, 22 July 1980, Page 14

Tikumu’s letter Press, 22 July 1980, Page 14