In 1812 a three-year-old French boy, Louis Braille, became blind. He attended the National School for the Blind and learned to read large raised letters. At the same time Captain Charles Barbie developed a code for night time military communications using raised dots.
     At 15 Braille combined the two ideas and created his own raised-dot system of writing. “Braille cells” are two dots wide and three dots high, and represent 63 different letters and symbols. This form of writing for the blind has been adopted to many different alphabets, including Hebrew on these stamps. The individual signs represent the letters, from left to right, j-s-r-a-l. On the stamp the Braille letters are raised.

     The stamp embossed with Braille issued in 1989 commemorated Valentin Hauy (1745-1822), the founder of the Paris School for the Blind in 1791. The braille on the stamp reads “Valentin Hauy (1745-1822) widely regarded as the father of modern education for the blind.”

     In 2005 South Africa issued a stamp with raised Braille lettering spelling the word Hello. The Braille includes the sign for a capital letter as the first letter.