Look. Don't Touch. Touch. Don't Feel.
Braille (Pronounced: /ˈbreɪl/ BRAYL) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser.
Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed the braille code based on the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which subsequently included musical notation, in 1829.[1] The second revision, published in 1837, was the first binary form of writing developed in the modern era.
Braille characters are formed using a combination of six raised dots arranged in a 3 × 2 matrix, called the braille cell. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguishes one character from another. Since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes for printed writing, the mappings (sets of character designations) vary from language to language, and even within one; in English Braille there are 3 levels of braille: uncontracted braille – a letter-by-letter transcription used for basic literacy; contracted braille – an addition of abbreviations and contractions used as a space-saving mechanism; and grade 3 – various non-standardized personal stenography that is less commonly used.
In addition to braille text (letters, punctuation, contractions), it is also possible to create embossed illustrations and graphs, with the lines either solid or made of series of dots, arrows, and bullets that are larger than braille dots. A full braille cell includes six raised dots arranged in two columns, each column having three dots.[2] The dot positions are identified by numbers from one to six.[2] There are 64 possible combinations, including no dots at all for a word space.[3] Dot configurations can be used to represent a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or even a word.[2]
Early braille education is crucial to literacy, education and employment among the blind. Despite the evolution of new technologies, including screen reader software that reads information aloud, braille provides blind people with access to spelling, punctuation and other aspects of written language less accessible through audio alone. While some have suggested that audio-based technologies will decrease the need for braille, technological advancements such as braille displays have continued to make braille more accessible and available. Braille users highlight that braille remains as essential as print is to the sighted.[4]
'[W]riting, the letter, the sensible inscription, has always been considered by Western tradition as the body and matter external to the spirit, to breath, to speech, and to the logos.'
Jacque Derrida, 'Of Grammatology' [trans. Chakravorty Spivak] pp. 35
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In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.[1]
The word grapheme, coined in analogy with phoneme, is derived from Ancient Greek γράφω (gráphō) 'write' and the suffix -eme by analogy with phoneme and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called graphemics. The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in computing of a character. By comparison, a specific shape that represents any particular grapheme in a given typeface is called a glyph.
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Argument: In Of Grammatology, Derrida argues that we have cause to re-evaluate our understanding of language, as signifying a ‘full speech’ that is ‘fully present’, and our assumption of writing as being conscripted in the service of the expressions of such a full presence.[1] For this movement of language, towards forms of writing whose ‘rationality’ can no-longer be said to issue from the Logos, must necessarily lead to the de-prioritization of speech.[2]
Indeed, for Derrida, the advent of the cybernetic program would signal the coming of age of writing; in the sense that, the written mark—the grammè, remains quintessentially its element. An element inculcated in what Derrida describes as the historico-metaphysical epoch: a ‘history that has associated technics and logocentric metaphysics for nearly three millennia’.[3] It follows, if writing can be said to ‘comprehend language,’ then, the next phase in the evolution of writing will see its application beyond the instantiation of comprehension, towards the very designation of the essence and content of experience itself: ‘beyond the signifying face, the signified face itself’.[4]
Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky.
