Louis Braille was a French educator and the inventor of a reading and writing system named after him, braille, intended for use by visually impaired people. His system is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day.
The subject of blindness and education has included evolving approaches and public perceptions of how best to address the special needs of blind students. The practice of institutionalizing the blind in asylums has a history extending back over a thousand years, but it was not until the 18th century that authorities created schools for them where blind children, particularly those more privileged, were usually educated in such specialized settings. These institutions provided simple vocational and adaptive training, as well as grounding in academic subjects offered through alternative formats. Literature, for example, was being made available to blind students by way of embossed Roman letters.
Night writing is the name given to a form of tactile writing invented by Charles Barbier de la Serre (1767-1841). It is one of a dozen forms of alternative writing presented in a book published in 1815: Essai sur divers procédés d'expéditive française, contenant douze écritures différentes, avec une planche pour chaque procédé. The term does not appear in the book, but was later applied to the method shown on Plate VII of that book. This method of writing with raised dots that could be read by touch was adopted at the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris.
Jean François-Hyacinthe Langlais III was a French composer of modern classical music, organist, and improviser. He described himself as "Breton, de foi Catholique".
René Just Haüy FRS MWS FRSE was a French priest and mineralogist, commonly styled the Abbé Haüy after he was made an honorary canon of Notre Dame. Due to his innovative work on crystal structure and his four-volume Traité de Minéralogie (1801), he is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Crystallography". During the French Revolution he also helped to establish the metric system.
Charles Barbier de la Serre was the French inventor of several forms of shorthand and alternative means of writing, one of which became the inspiration for Braille.
Valentin Haüy was the founder, in 1785, of the first school for the blind, the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. In 1819, Louis Braille entered this school.
Augustin Charles Barié was a French composer and organist.
Gaston Gilbert Litaize was a French organist and composer. Considered one of the 20th century masters of the French organ, he toured, recorded, worked at churches, and taught students in and around Paris. Blind from infancy, he studied and taught for most of his life at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles.
André Louis Marchal was a French organist and organ teacher. He was one of the great initiators of the twentieth-century organ revival in France and one of the cofounders of the Association des amis de l'orgue alongside Norbert Dufourcq.
The slate and stylus are tools used by blind people to write text that they can read without assistance. Invented by Charles Barbier as the tool for writing letters that could be read by touch, the slate and stylus allow for a quick, easy, convenient and constant method of making embossed printing for Braille character encoding. Prior methods of making raised printing for the blind required a movable type printing press.
The Musée Valentin Haüy is a private museum dedicated to tools and education of the blind, and located in the building of the Valentin Haüy Association, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris at 5, rue Duroc, Paris, France. It is open Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons without charge.
Maurice de La Sizeranne, blinded at age 9, was an important figure in the movement to support the blind.
Joséphine Pauline Boulay was a French organist, composer and professor.
The Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital is France's national ophthalmology hospital located in Paris, in the 12th arrondissement. The hospital gave its name to the Quinze-Vingts quarter.
Sophie Massieu, is a journalist from the department of Manche in Normandy, France.
Marius André Gueit was a 19th-century French organist, cellist and composer.
Adolphe Alexandre Silvain Marty was a French organist, improviser, composer and music educator who was blind for most of his life.
Pierre-François-Victor Foucault (1797–1871) was the inventor in 1843 of the first printing machine for braille, the decapoint.
Zina Weygand is a French historian and emeritus researcher at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. She obtained her PhD from University Paris 1 in 1998.
