The Latin 1-Supplement block is part of Unicode, which is an international standard that provides support for a wide range of characters and symbols. This block adds characters used in Western European languages such as á, é, í, ó ,ú and others, as well as symbols like the euro sign (€) and various currency symbols. This allows applications like word processors, web browsers and databases to represent text in these languages with ease. The "Latin 1 Supplement" block effectively extends the range of characters available compared to the "Basic Latin" block; providing access to an even larger pool of language use across the world.

One of the major advantages of using the Latin 1 Supplement block is that it allows for multilingual text input. This means that users can switch between different languages without having to worry about whether their device supports the language they are trying to type in. Additionally, this makes it easier for software developers to create applications that support multiple languages without having to worry about character encoding issues. Furthermore, this also allows users to access currencies from different countries without needing additional software or plugins; this could be extremely useful for people who travel often or do business across borders.

The Latin 1 Supplement block also provides compatibility with many existing character encodings such as ISO 8859-1, Windows 1252 and Mac Roman. By supporting these encodings, it provides backward compatibility with programs written before Unicode was adopted as a standard. Additionally, many operating systems now include support for Unicode, so it's becoming increasingly likely that most systems will already have access to this character set. Having access to this set of characters makes it possible for users all over the world to communicate more effectively by exchanging text in their own native language.