Braille, and reading by touch

Unit 1 ends with a question all three texts point to: how do people who can't see read and write?

They read by touch, using Braille: a code of raised dots for the letters of the alphabet. The dots stand up from the page, so a finger moving across them can feel which pattern is which.

There's a pattern for every letter A to Z, and for the numbers 0 to 9. Your book prints the whole alphabet. Try writing your name in Braille using bindis or grains of dal for the dots, then close your eyes and feel it!

The code is named after its maker, Louis Braille. He became blind when he was very young, after an accident. He worked on his touch code for nine years.

Nine years: does that remind you of something? King Bruce's spider made nine attempts before it won! Louis Braille spent nine years. The unit is called 'Learning Together', and every text is about someone who kept going.

See how the three fit together:

• Jahnavi wasn't allowed to learn; she was scared and went anyway
• the spider fell nine times and climbed a tenth
• Helen Keller, who could neither see nor hear, learnt to read and write, and tells the rest of us to use the senses we have

And what made Helen Keller's reading possible? Braille, made by a boy after an accident took his sight. That's the unit's real message: learning isn't always easy, but it's worth the effort, and people make ways for each other.