Today we want to talk about American Braille. This topic is extremely relevant today and is generating great interest in different areas. American Braille has captured the attention of many experts and people worldwide, due to its importance and the implications it has in various areas. In this article we will explore American Braille in depth, analyzing its various aspects and providing detailed information so that our readers can better understand its importance and impact on society. Without a doubt, American Braille is an issue that we cannot ignore, and it is crucial to approach it from different perspectives to understand its scope and make informed decisions.
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.