(FULL LENGTH) The Dotted Line interweaves two stories: the true story of Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille alphabet for the blind with the fictional story of Brian Walker, a middle-aged man rapidly losing his eyesight to macular generation. Reggie, a New York street performer, is a pseudo-Greek chorus who serves as a narrative link between the stories.
Louis loses his eyesight at age 3 when he is playing in his father’s saddle-making workshop and accidentally pokes one eye with an awl. The infection spreads to his other eye, permanently blinding the young boy. A Marquise who lives in the small French town of Couvray helps pay for him to attend the Royal Institute for the Blind in Paris.
At the school, Louis must deal with horrible living conditions, which later cause him to develop consumption. Brian learns that he has macular degeneration in his early-forties, even though it mostly affects the elderly.
Louis develops the raised dot system of reading for the blind, after an Army captain named Charles Barbier comes to the school with his own raised dot system he developed during the Revolution called sonography and presents it the headmaster, Dr. Pignier. The students have trouble learning the system because it has too many dots and sounds.
Louis demonstrates his system of King Louis-Philippe, who is impressed but will not offer support. Meanwhile, Louis develops a method of reading and writing called raphigraphy, using dotted letters that both sighted and blind people can read. A blind friend, Francois-Pierre Foucault, invents a machine to make the letters. It is the prototype of the modern typewriter.
Brain dances with his ex-wife Lauren at her wedding. She tells him she has bought him a book on tape. He is hesitant to accept her gift. She asks him what he hopes his legacy will be. He jokes that he hopes to be remembered as “a man with a vision.” Louis learns he has consumption. Dr. Pignier is forced out by Armand Dufau, who convinces the Minister of the Interior that Pignier is too liberal and states that he is a threat to their system of government. Dufau bans the dot system, and students hide forks and knitting needles so that they can continue to read and write in the method they know best. Brain checks into a spa in Florida to be with real dolphins. Joseph Gaudet, Dufau’s assistant, convinces Dufau to accept the system before there is revolt, and a demonstration of the dot system is given and proves to be successful.
Louis dies of consumption and his brother and friends find a box that Louis wanted burned, containing receipts of loans to the many people he had given gifts and money. Brian listens to a book on tape. Louis’ funeral is given, and the blind pay their respects.