DID you know that all letters and sentences in Braille script are written by using a combination of just six dots? Or that
Braille in Chinese represents the sound of the language rather than its character? Or for that matter, that the Braille book does not contain images due to the lack of technological advancement?
These and other interesting tidbits on the Braille script are part of a book by Kathan Kothari, a UG student of graphic design at the National Institute of Design (NID). Titled Braille, the book tries to shed myths about Braille for a lay audience who have no idea about the script.
What’s more, the book has been shortlisted for the fifth edition of Dubai’s Ibda’a Media Festival Award in graphic designing category. But Kathan won’t be going alone. Joining him are three other NID students who have also been shortlisted in categories like
animation, feature film and analog
photography.
The winners will be announced on April 20. Other participants include Ranveer Shambi whose animation film Swoosh won Second Best Animation Film award at MIFF recently, Aloke Shetty whose feature film Chances Are will be competing for the first time, and Gayatri Gunjal who is competing in Analog Photography category.
‘‘Apart from satiating my own childhood curiosity about the script, I have also tried to make the book interactive so that a reader can easily learn about this interesting script,’’ says Kathan, who has both authored and designed the book himself.
From preparing the text to doing photography to designing cover to selecting the font, Kathan has worked on every detail of the book. ‘‘I have dedicated the book to the Blind People’s Association at Vastrapur as the institute contributed a lot into making the book a reality,’’ says this Ahmedabad lad. ‘‘As a child I was fascinated by the association as well as its dwellers, the visually challenged, and the Braille script itself,’’ he adds.
The book, comprising 40 aesthetically designed pages, contains every bit of information on Braille along with good pictures, some downloaded from the Net, some taken by Kathan on his digital camera. ‘‘While I relied on the Internet for some information, I interacted a lot with people working for the visually challenged and gathered many details,” he says.
Kathan has also used the Braille script in the book to help the reader associate with it better. Page numbers, for instance, are written in both Roman and Braille script. Divided into four chapters, ‘Blindness and Invention,’ ‘Braille,’ ‘Embossing Braille,’ ‘Progress,’ the book deals with the figures related to blind people, then moves on to talk about Louis Braille and the Braille system. The book further deals with embossing a braille book.