American Foundation for the Blind York City headquarters. Louis Braille was the Frenchman who invented the raised dot code that bears his name. On January 4, 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth, AFB created an online gallery that includes pictures of him and digitized books and articles. AFB's main headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia. Other offices include New York City; Dallas, Texas; and Huntington, West Virginia. In 2012, AFB added VisionAware to its family of sites in partnership with the "Reader's Digest" Partners for Sight Foundation. The site folded in content from AFB's Senior Site, with new information and resources for adults of all
Louis Braille for Representing by Dots the Form of Letters, Maps, Geometric Figures, Musical Symbols, etc., for Use by the Blind" was first published in 1839. Many of Braille's original printed works remain available at the Braille birthplace museum in Coupvray. "New Method for Representing by Dots..." (1839) put forth Braille's plan for a new writing system with which blind people could write letters that could be read by sighted people. Called decapoint, the system combined his method of dot-punching with a new specialized grill which Braille devised to overlay the paper. When used with an associated number table (also designed by