Braille Day 2019: Will Braille may become a thing of the past?

Bengaluru, Jan 3: World Braille Day is being observed on Friday in order to raise awareness of the importance of braille as a means of communication in the full realization of the human rights for blind and partially sighted people.

What is Braille?

Braille is a tactile representation of alphabetic and numerical symbols using six dots to represent each letter and number, and even musical, mathematical and scientific symbols. Braille, named after its inventor in 19th century France, Louis Braille, is used by blind and partially sighted people to read the same books and periodicals as those printed in a visual font. Use of braille allows the communication of important information to and from individuals who are blind or partially sighted, ensuring competency, independence and equality.

Braille is a means of communication for blind persons, as reflected in article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and is essential in the context of education, freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information and written communication, as well as for the social inclusion of blind persons, as reflected in articles 21 and 24 of the Convention.

Personal assisting system may replace Braille:

In coming days Braille may a become a thing od the past. Manovue - the world's first intelligent personal assisting system invented by Roopam Sharma may replace the Braille.

Manovue eliminates the need for Braille language to decipher a printed text and instead combines vision intelligence to help the visually impaired people read. Manovue was also awarded the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2015 and Yahoo Accenture Innovation Jockeys season 4.

Roopam Sharma won the World Health Summit Startup award, 2018 for his invention. "Manovue basically functions as a wearable glove and integrated mobile phone app, which enables the user to read any printed text by moving his/her finger over the text," the 10th UNESCO Youth Forum quotes him as saying.