In today's world, American Braille has become a recurring topic of indisputable relevance. Whether due to its impact on society, politics or people's daily lives, American Braille has acquired significant importance today. Its influence is not limited to a specific area, but covers various aspects ranging from technology to culture. With the advance of globalization, American Braille has become a common point of interest in all corners of the world, generating debates, reflections and actions that seek to understand and address its scope and impact. In this article, we will thoroughly explore the impact of American Braille and its implications on different aspects of modern life.
Braille alphabet used in the US before the adoption of standardized English braille
American Braille was a popular braille alphabet used in the United States before the adoption of standardized English Braille in 1918. It was developed by Joel W. Smith, a blind piano tuning teacher at Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, and introduced in 1878 as Modified Braille. In 1900 it was renamed American Braille.
Rather than ordering the letters numerically, as was done in French Braille and the (reordered) English Braille also used in the US at the time, in American Braille the letters were partially reassigned by frequency, with the most-common letters being written with the fewest dots. This significantly improved writing speed with the slate and stylus, which wrote one dot at a time, but lost its advantage with the braille typewriters that became practical after 1950.
^Doubled (⠦⠦) for single quotation marks. The reason for this was that in the US, single quotation marks were less frequent, being used where double quotation marks were in Britain.
Sources
Irwin, Robert (1955). As I Saw It. American Foundation for the Blind.