 As soon as he could walk , Braille spent time playing in his father 's workshop . At the age of three , the child was toying with some of the tools , trying to make holes in a piece of leather with an awl . Squinting closely at the surface , he pressed down hard to drive the point in , and the awl glanced across the tough leather and struck him in one of his eyes . A local physician bound and patched the affected eye and even arranged for Braille to be met the next day in Paris by a highly respected surgeon , but no treatment could save the damaged organ . In agony , the young boy suffered for weeks as the wound became severely infected ; an infection which then spread to his other eye , likely due to sympathetic ophthalmia.a 
