Charity Calls on Government to Fund Libraries for Blind in line with Libraries for Sighted People.
Release Date: Jan 5th, 2009
Request comes on 200th anniversary of birth of founder of touch reading system used by people who are blind.
The National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) is calling on government to bring the funding of library services for people who are blind and vision impaired into the funding stream for public libraries.
Des Kenny, NCBI’s Chief Executive said, “Braille enables people who are blind to read and write independently. Thanks to the provision of the Disability Act a person who is blind can request in braille any document published by any of our government departments. This is a significant recognition of the place played by Braille in the lives of people who use the touch reading system,” Kenny says.
“It is now time for Government to take one more significant step in this year of Louis Braille’s bi-centenary by elevating the funding status of NCBI’s library services for people who are blind from a health provision to a status similar to that which funds the national and public libraries services.”
While most of the NCBI’s collection of titles loaned out every year to the over 5,000 people who use the library, are in audio format, the charity nevertheless continues to promote the use and retention of the national Braille collection of titles for the 500 people in Ireland who use this touch reading system in the course of their work, studies and leisure. The National lending collections of Braille and audio titles are held by the NCBI at a purpose built centre in Finglas, Dublin.
The call for new investment in funding the library services for people who are blind comes on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, the man responsible for inventing the raised dot alphabet. Louis Braille was born in France on the 4th of January 1809 and the first lending service of books in touch reading in Dublin commenced nearly 50 years later, in 1858.
Braille works by basing every character in the braille code on an arrangement of one to six raised dots. Each dot has a numbered position in the braille cell which corresponds to letters and numbers.
Blinded by an accident at the age of 3, Louis Braille developed the tactile system when he was just 15 years old.
Notes to Editor
1. The National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) provides support to more than 13,000 people who are blind or vision impaired throughout the country.
2. NCBI’s vision is for people who are blind and vision impaired to have the same opportunities, rights and choices as others to fully participate in society.
3. Louis Braille was born in Paris on 4th January 1809.
4. Braille was blinded by an accident in his father’s workshop at the age of 3.
5. He was introduced to a complex system of tactile writing at the age of 12 – “night writing” – which was developed by Napoleon’s army.
6. By the time he was 15 years of age he had developed the simplified raised dot alphabet which bears his name and is used in virtually every country around the world.
7. The Braille system did not catch on immediately and it wasn’t formally taught until after Louis Braille’s death at the age of 43, from tuberculosis.
8. The school that Louis Braille attended, and later taught at, even banned the children from learning it. However, this seemed to simply encourage the children to learn it in secret.
9. Louis Braille’s achievement was finally recognised by the French state in 1952 when his body was moved to Paris where it was buried in the Pantheon, the home of France's national heroes.