Currently, there is an update to the code that is awaiting approval called Universal English Braille. You can read more about that here: http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pubjvib.asp?DocID=jvib031002
This code has been worked on and fine-tuned for the past twenty years, and still hasn’t gotten everyone in the English-speaking nations to agree on it. What? Like someone thought they could get agreement on something like that? We can’t even agree on whether to drink beer warm or cold!

This post offers a perfect intro to a book I stumbled along awhile back. I don’t know if it’s come up before, but I discovered a book called “A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became the World’s Greatest Traveler” by Jason Roberts. It’s the biography of James Holman, a British naval officer in the early 19th century who, at the age of 25, mysteriously became blind while serving abroad. After he went blind, he wrote his own travel memoirs with a pencil and paper. He overcame a lot of taboos that were attached to blind men during the 19th century – including mobility with the use of a cane and the ability to write.

I’ve always pictured him as the real-life Matt Murdock of the 1820s. It’s a good read for anyone interested in this type of history.