Why not just use the original letters?
In: Technology
Originally, raised letters is exactly what they had. It was very difficult to produce them–basically no quick way to handwrite them. It was hard to read them–letter shapes are optimized for writing with a pen and reading with eyes. Blind people have a totally different use case.
Louis Braille was fed up with how bad that system was for blind people, and decided to create his own system that was easy for *him* to read and write. The system of raised dots poked through with an awl was what he came up with, and it was a dramatic improvement for reading speed and ease of writing. It was so much better that it caught on quickly with other blind people around him (they were basically grouped together in a hospital for blind people who were otherwise a bit helpless in a society prior to accessibility law).
Raised letters was the solution that seeing people came up for blind people. Braille was a solution that came from a blind person who actually understood the use case. It’s not all that different in concept from the invention of sports bras that actually worked by women, and other cases where it turns out people who actually need to use the thing have the best idea of how it should work.
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