braille
/breyl/ (Often capitalised) A class of
{writing systems}, intended for use by blind and low-vision
users, which express {glyphs} as raised dots. Currently
employed braille standards use eight dots per cell, where a
cell is a glyph-space two dots across by four dots high; most
glyphs use only the top six dots.
Braille was developed by Louis Braille (pronounced /looy
bray/) in France in the 1820s. Braille systems for most
languages can be fairly trivially converted to and from the
usual script.
Braille has several totally coincidental parallels with
digital computing: it is {binary}, it is based on groups of
eight bits/dots and its development began in the 1820s, at the
same time {Charles Babbage} proposed the {Difference Engine}.
Computers output Braille on {braille displays} and {braille
printers} for hard copy.
{British Royal National Institute for the Blind
(http://www.rnib.org.uk/wesupply/fctsheet/braille.htm)}.
(1998-10-19)