The purpose of World Braille Day is to honour Louis Braille’s achievements in literacy, independence, and communication on a global scale. The day’s purpose is to increase public awareness of the value of Braille as a communication tool for the blind and visually impaired. Its importance cannot be over-emphasised since it supports the larger goal of establishing inclusive settings that value the potential and rights of people with disabilities.
To mark the importance of this day, 4th January 2024, the South African Library for the Blind (SALB) has embarked on numerous activities to promote understanding and the use of Braille as a communication tool throughout the year. To note a few, the SALB has been very active in promoting the use of Braille by conducting Braille training and workshops for different audiences across the country.
The Braille Quality Control Officer at SALB, Ms Nomsa Mukwevho gave highlights of the library in this regard.
“It is very important to keep Braille literacy alive mostly for the next generation of blind persons to live their lives independently in the future. Most recently, we held a week-long Braille training workshop in Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province where we had several adults especially those who had lost their eyesight from different illnesses including former miners who participated in the Braille workshop. The training was done in collaboration with a retired director from the University of South Africa (UNISA), Dr Siva Moodley, who proved to be very instrumental in the training intervention. The workshop focused on the basics of Grade 1 Braille which is the introduction of uncontracted Braille comprising letters, alphabets, numbers, and punctuation marks. We would like to thank the Department of Arts and Culture in the Northern Cape which made this training possible through financial support. Braille is the only primary form of reading and writing understood by blind users” affirmed Ms Mukwevho.
Other workshops of this nature also took place during the same period in the Northwest Province and KwaZulu-Natal.
Bona Buntu is another training program that the SALB embarks on in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education where teachers are taught how to facilitate Braille lessons to blind school children impacting on their literacy. Three courses on this program were held between September and October 2023 and have reached three schools in the Eastern Cape Province with an intake of 90 educators in total.
The South African Library for the Blind Chief Executive Officer, Dr Pateka Ntshuntshe-Matshaya has reiterated the importance of learning Braille at a young age in the blind community.
“Learning braille from a young age has important benefits for children and adults who are blind and those with vision impairment. It can help with literacy, as braille is a much better way to understand punctuation, grammar, and spelling than audio. To just pick up a book, touch it, smell it, and be able to read it is a lovely thing in life that everybody should experience. As the South African Library for the Blind, we consider braille as the first step towards reading literacy to the blind society. It is on that note we strongly believe its world commemoration resonates very well to our existence” said Dr Ntshuntshe-Matshaya