World Braille Day 2024: Sight without seeing

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A view of a sheet with sentences written in Braille, a system consisting of raised dots that form letters and words that can be read by touch. Currently, more advanced facilities for the visually impaired are being prioritised worldwide, such as easy accessibility in public places and guiding applications on smartphones.

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Visually impaired students listen to live radio commentary of the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup one-day international match between India and New Zealand at Devnar Residential School for the Blind in Hyderabad on November 15, 2023.


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Ahmed Hamid from Nour, Syria, holds a glass eye that was inserted in place of his left eye, after he lost his sight completely in the aftermath of a missile attack by the Syrian regime, August 09, 2023. Each of the 100 families in the village of Nour has at least one person who is visually impaired since birth or has been blinded by the war


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Visually impaired people gather from all over Nepal to participate in a rock-climbing event at Pharphing on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, January 07, 2023. Held for the first time in the country, the climb was organised by two non-profit organisations Guffy Monkey and Blind Rocks, working to empower visually-impaired people and enable them to lead independent and productive lives.

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Blind people experience the annular solar eclipse with sound using a device called LightSound (a solar eclipse sonification tool) at the Astronomical Observatory of the National Autonomous University of Honduras in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on October 14, 2023. The tool was developed to provide a way for the blind and the visually-impaired to have a means to experience the solar eclipse through sound

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Blind golfer Owen Robinson from England is guided by Deon Maritz from South Africa on the practice green, ahead of the 2023 World Blind Golf Championships at Milnerton Golf Club in Cape Town, South Africa, March 30, 2023. There were three sight categories for players, B1 (no vision), B2 (less than 5% acuity), and B3 (less than 10% acuity). Each of the players taking part had a guide to assist them with alignment, reading greens, and finding their ball, amongst other things.


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A blind man walks past a Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa—the legendary path that Jesus took through Jerusalem to his crucifixion—in the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel, on December 2, 2023. An ongoing Israeli offensive, in retaliation against an attack by Hamas militants on October 7, has killed over 22,000 Palestinians thus far.

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Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, 'The Country of the Blind' documents author Andrew Leland’s determination to survive retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that gradually leads to blindness.

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A statue of Buddha, his almost-closed eyes representing focused concentration, attracts a shopper at Diwali bazaar organised by the Blind Relief Association at Lodhi Road on November 7, 2023 in New Delhi, India. An annual event for 42 years now, the bazaar showcases the products made by the visually impaired trainees and workers of the Association. The earnings help finance their diverse services.

Image: Seun Sanni / Reuters
Aloga Friday, a visually impaired person, makes beads bags after Sunday church service at Bethesda Home for the Blind in Lagos, Nigeria, on July 2, 2023. "One of the cardinal areas of focus of this 2023-2025 biennium is to reach out to the physically-challenged," the founder of the Home Chioma Ohakwe was quoted as saying


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Blind German soccer player Jana Marquart stands with presenter Eckart von Hirschhausen in the TV studio before the recording of the ARD show "Was kann der Mensch” (What Humans can Do) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne, Germany, on April 22, 2023. Jana shakes the soccer ball, which has built-in rattles, as blind soccer players play by the ear. Germany became the first women’s European champion in blind football, defeating England by 4-0 in June 2022


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Acclaimed visually impaired artist Clarke Reynolds exhibits his Braille works in 'The Power of Touch’, his first London solo exhibition on January 11, 2023. Visitors to the show wore special glasses to sample Clarke’s distinctive braille art in much the same way a blind/partially sighted person would.


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A Refreshable Digital Braille Display that helps a visually impaired person read and take notes. Braille displays provide access to information on a computer screen by electronically raising and lowering different combinations of pins in braille cells. A braille display can show up to 80 characters from the screen and is refreshable—that is, it changes continuously as the user moves the cursor around on the screen, using either the command keys, cursor routing keys, or Windows and screen reader commands.