Louis Braille was born in France in 1809. His father made things from leather in a small workshop. One day, when Louis was three years old, he played with a sharp tool in the workshop. The tool slipped and hurt his eye. Soon, both of his eyes became sick, and by the age of five, Louis was blind.
Louis didn't give up. At ten, he went to a special school for blind children in Paris. The school had only a few books for blind students. The letters in these books were very big, and they stood out from the page, so the students felt them with their fingers. But the books were very heavy, and reading was slow.
When Louis was twelve, a soldier visited the school. He showed the students a secret code of dots. Soldiers used this code to understand messages at night, without light. Louis loved the idea, but the code was too hard. So he worked on it for three years and made it simple: six dots for every letter.
Today, millions of blind people around the world use Braille's system of dots. Louis's idea changed their lives.