Directions: In this section there are short passages. After each passage you will find questions based on it. Answer them based on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author only.
PASSAGE VII
Although Louis Braille died when he was only forty-three years old, he succeeded in devising a system of reading and writing for the blind which is now taught all over the world. Braille lost his sight accidentally as a child. Nevertheless, he was able to complete his education at a school for the blind in Paris and became a teacher. In his day, the few books that were available for blind people were printed in big, raised type; the letters used were those of the ordinary alphabet. The reading of such books required immense effort. Not only that, writing was almost impossible, for a blind person was still restricted to an alphabet which was extraordinarily difficult to reproduce on paper. Braille's idea was to use raised dots, instead of raised letters. He evolved a system, which made use of only six dots in all. By various combinations of these dots, it not only proved possible to represent each letter in the alphabet, but punctuation marks, numbers and musical notation as well. Reading and writing for the blind have thus become enormously simplified. The sensitive fingers of a blind person can travel rapidly over the dots; and there is a small machine, something like a typewriter, which enables the blind to write quickly and clearly.
Braille's system allows the blind
- Ato write with ease
- Bto read easily
- Cto read as well as write with ease
- Dto read easily but to write with great effort
Explanation
'Reading and writing for the blind have thus become enormously simplified.'