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Louis Braille was born in 1809 in Coupvray, France, and lost his sight at the age of three after an accident in his father’s workshop. At ten, he was admitted to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, where blind students relied on large embossed books that were slow to read and offered little material. Frustrated by these limits, Louis wanted a practical way for blind people to read and write with greater ease and independence. At fifteen, he began working on a new system, simplifying a military code of raised dots into an arrangement that blind people could learn quickly and use efficiently. This new system later became known as braille. In 1829, he published his method, and students at the Institute began using it even before it was fully accepted by teachers. Louis died in 1852 at the age of forty-three, but his invention spread around the world. Today, braille is still the standard reading and writing system for the blind.