Are you familiar with Louise Braille? Louis Braille was a a French education and invented a reading and writing system intended for visually impaired people. The system named after him, braille, is used worldwide and remains unchanged to this day.
According to a study from the World Health Organization Prevention of Blindness and Deafness Program, they estimate around 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, 39 million people are considered blind and 246 million people have low vision. That is over 570 million people affect by a vision impairments.
The Library of Congress has established the National Library Service (NLS). It is a free braille and talking book library service for people with temporary or permanent vision impairments or reading disability. Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS circulates books & magazines in braille or audio formats instantly downloadable to a personal device or mailed free of charge.
What does the NLS offer?
The NLS has an extensive collection that can be browsed via catalog by title, author, narrator, subject or keywords. Many titles have links for immediate download. Additionally, patrons can utilized Braille and Audio Reading Download service (BARD) to access the most popular downloads from the last 30 days.
Talking Book Topics (TBT) is a bimonthly magazine highlighting the latest audiobooks added to the NLS collection. TBT titles are available on the TBT landing page in HTML, printable PDF, as an audio from BARD, or via mail on audio cartridge with a magazine subscription.
Braille Book Review (BBR) is a bimonthly magazine that highlights most of the latest braille books added to the NLS collection. BBR titles are available on the BBR landing page in HTML, ebraille, download BBR in ebraille from BARD, or by mail in hard-copy braille.
How can you qualify for NLS?
Any resident of the US or American citizen living abroad who is unable to read or use regular print materials as a result of a temporary or permanent visual impairment or reading disability qualifies.
Qualifications include:
- Blind persons whose visual acuity, as determined by competent authority, is 20/200 or less in the better eye with correcting lenses, or whose widest diameter of visual field subtends an angular distance no greater than 20 degrees.
- Persons whose visual disability, with correction and regardless of optical measurement, is certified by competent authority as preventing the reading of standard printed material
- Persons certified by competent authority as unable to read or unable to use standard printed material as a result of physical limitations.
- Persons certified by competent authority as having a perceptual or reading disability and unable to read printed works to substantially the same degree as a person without an impairment or disability.
- Persons eligible for service (falling into any of the above categories) who are now living as residents of the United States (including its territories, insular possessions, and the District of Columbia), or are American citizens eligible for service who are now living abroad, or dependents of active military personnel or diplomats.
Learn more about NLS by visiting the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled website.
Below are a few books to learn more about Louis Braille and how he developed the braille system!
Books about Louis Braille
A Picture Book of Louis Braille
“Presents the life of the nineteenth-century Frenchman, accidentally blinded as a child, who originated the raised dot system of reading and writing used throughout the world by the blind.”
Who Was Louis Braille? by Margaret Frith
“Examines the life and times of the nineteenth-century Frenchman who developed the system of raised dots by which blind people read and write.”
Louis Braille: A Touch of Genius by Michael Mellor
“An illustrated biography of Louis Braille, the blind Frenchman who created a revolutionary system of reading and writing by touch.”