United Nations World Braille Day, says Crystal.
It seems that one Charles Barbier had, in 1815, devised a system of raised dots
pressed into paper, so that a text could be read with the fingers. This was intended for military use (soldiers in battle could read messages at night without raising a light). It was never so used, but was eventually taken up by
the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles, where L.B. (then aged 15) was a student. He simplified the dot patterns so they could be rapidly read with a single finger, and made other improvements to produce the system which bears his name.
PTD in _The World's Writing Systems_ (p.886) calls this "the first effective digitization of writing".
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