"Fall Braille"

Originally released September, 2011, one year later the re-release of Fall Braille has hit Starbucks Stores in North America. The Fall Braille (also known as Fall Leaves) Starbucks Card is yet another first for the Starbucks Card. This Card is designed with colored autumn leaves, but the striking feature is the actual braille to the left of the new sirens eye (logo). The Card was punched with STARBUCKS in the Braille format (click magnifying glass for closer look). This design is universal and can be used worldwide. October is also National Disability Awareness Month.

The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing that was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form sixty-four (2 6 ) possible subsets, including the arrangement in which no dots are raised.

The Canadian version has the bi-lingual English/French on the reverse.

Collectors Note: The 2011 version had the 6069 prefix. In 2012 the prefix is 6078. Both years have the same SKU# and copyright. Essentially, both issues are the same.

Braille History

The Braille system was based on a method of communication originally developed by Charles Barbier in response to Napoleon 's demand for a code that soldiers could use to communicate silently and without light at night called night writing. Barbier's system of sets of 12 embossed dots encoding 36 different sounds was too difficult for soldiers to perceive by touch, and was rejected by the military. In 1821 he visited the National Institute for the Blind in Paris, where he met Louis Braille. Braille identified the two major defects of the code: first, by representing only sounds, the code was unable to give the orthography of the words; two, the human finger could not encompass the whole symbol without moving, and so could not move rapidly from one symbol to another. His modification was to use a 6 dot cell — the Braille system — representing all the letters of the alphabet which revolutionized written communication for the blind.

At first the system was a one-to-one transliteration of French, but soon various abbreviations and contractions were developed, creating a system much more like shorthand.

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