World Braille Day today

Islamabad : World Braille Day will be marked across the globe including Pakistan on January 4 (Saturday) reviving the pledge to extend maximum facilities to the visually impaired persons for ensuring their role in different spheres of life.

Different organizations will arrange the events including seminars and discussion programme to highlight the contributions of visually impaired persons in society and emphasizing the need to provide maximum facilities to them.

World Braille Day, celebrated since 2019, is observed every year 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. Talking to this agency, Syed Sardar Ahmad Pirzada who is the first blind journalist of the country said Braille Day is celebrated every year to commemorate the contribution of Louis Braille for blind people of the world who invented a reading and writing system which helped blind people in learning and reading.

The day marks the importance of teaching and providing equal opportunity to blind people and highlights the problems faced by them, he said. About the Braille system, he explained it is a representation of letters and symbols within a grid in rows.

The inventor, Louis Braille created the system after he went blind at the age of five due to an accident.

He developed the system when he was 15 years old and it was inspired by a military system of Night writing which assisted soldiers in communicating in the dark without sound and light.

The system has been very helpful in giving an opportunity to blind people to get education alongside their peers and be able to read at their whims and fancies, he said.

Sardar Ahmad Pirzada urged the government to facilitate the visually impaired persons in terms of their education, ensuring their role in country’s development.