Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education. This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. An Appeal to the Senses: The Development of the Braille System in Nineteenth-Century France

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