Damascus-SANA
World Braille Day comes with the aim of encouraging the blind and those with severe impairment to read and write, enhance their opportunities for learning and work, activate their integration into their communities, and raise awareness of the importance of learning to write in Braille.
The Braille language, which celebrated its world day for the first time in 2019, is a display method for alphanumeric symbols using 6 points that can be touched by touch to represent each letter and number, including symbols of music, mathematics and science, and is used to read books and periodicals printed in visual line, ensuring that blind people have access to information. the mission.
In Syria, the blind and visually impaired study in special institutes affiliated to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour, including the Institute of Special Education for the Rehabilitation of the Blind in Damascus, which printed textbooks in Braille and provided the curriculum for its students after adapting it and explaining pictures, maps and graphs and translating them into Braille to provide the same level and quality of education. Which the sighted student receives, according to the director of the institute, Nada Abu Al-Shamat.
Abu Al-Shamat explained in a statement to SANA that the institute, after providing the requirements for the printing process in Braille, printed the school curriculum in Word format in cooperation with the Light Initiative, noting that the success rate of students in the general secondary certificate exams in its literary branch reached 100 percent last year.
More than 160 male and female students from 6 to 18 years old are currently studying at the institute, and they receive their education according to the curriculum of the Ministry of Education, which is printed in Braille according to Abu Al-Shamat.
In her turn, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Syrian Harmony Association for Blind Women, Maysa Al-Sakka, explained that learning in Braille provides an added value to the blind, and opens a wide horizon for reading and reading on the one hand, and pursuing his studies in the various stages of education on the other hand, pointing out that the association offers courses for learning to write in Braille, in addition to To English language and computer driving courses, indicating that the number of blind women benefiting from the services of the association is about 550 blind women, whose ages are over 18 years.
Al-Saqa stressed the importance of blind people learning the Braille method to help their children continue their studies, which reflects positively on their academic and practical lives, indicating that there is a special room at the University of Damascus to print lectures in Braille according to the desire and need of blind students, which contributes to facilitating their studies.
Al-Sakka indicated that the International Day of the Braille Language, which refers to the method of writing for the blind, is an opportunity to support this group of people with disabilities and encourage their learning, noting the importance of providing various types of books in Braille to meet the blind people’s passion for reading and reading, especially since modern technologies, despite their high costs, have contributed to Developing Braille writing from typewriters to mobiles and computers.
It is noteworthy that the United Nations chose January 4 of each year to be International Braille Day, because this date coincides with the birth day of Louis Braille in 1809, the inventor of the well-known Braille method.
Muhannad Suleiman
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