Braille Alphabet Copy and Paste

How the six dot braille cell is numbered

A braille cell is six dot positions arranged in two columns of three. The left column, read top to bottom, is dots 1, 2 and 3. The right column, top to bottom, is dots 4, 5 and 6. Any combination of those six positions can be raised or flat, which gives 64 possible cells including the empty one.

That numbering is the standard way to describe any braille character, and it is what the notes on this page use. The letter a is dot 1. The letter b is dots 1-2. The letter c is dots 1-4, which is the top row of both columns. Once you think in dot numbers rather than pictures, the whole system becomes learnable.

Computer braille and some music and mathematics codes extend the cell to eight dots by adding dots 7 and 8 below dots 3 and 6. Unicode covers these too, at U+2840 and above, which is why the braille block has 256 characters rather than 64.

• Dot 1: top left. Dot 4: top right.
• Dot 2: middle left. Dot 5: middle right.
• Dot 3: bottom left. Dot 6: bottom right.
• Dots 7 and 8 sit underneath, used only in eight dot computer braille.

Why braille numbers reuse the letters a to j

Braille has 63 usable cells and far more than 63 things to represent, so it reuses shapes and relies on context. Numbers are the clearest example. The digits 1 to 9 and 0 are simply the letters a to j, preceded by the number sign, dots 3-4-5-6.

The number sign stays in force for the rest of the number, so 2024 is one number sign followed by the cells for b, j, b and d. It ends at a space, or at a letter sign if a letter has to follow a digit directly, as in 3rd.

The same reuse trick explains the alphabet's own internal structure. The first ten letters, a to j, use only the top four dot positions. The next ten, k to t, repeat those exact shapes with dot 3 added. The last five before w repeat them again with dots 3 and 6 added. W is the odd one out, because Louis Braille was working in French, where w was not part of the alphabet at the time.

Grade 1 and Grade 2 braille

Grade 1 braille, also called uncontracted braille, spells every word out letter by letter. It is what beginners learn first and what you would use for an unfamiliar name or a technical term.

Grade 2 braille, or contracted braille, is what most braille books and signage actually use. It compresses common words and letter groups into single cells: one cell for the, one for and, one for with, and a single letter standing for a whole word so that b means but, c means can and t means that. Roughly 180 contractions exist in Unified English Braille.

The reason is physical. Braille takes up a lot of space, a print page can become three or four braille pages, and fingers read more slowly than eyes. Contractions cut the bulk substantially and raise reading speed. The cost is that Grade 2 has real rules about when a contraction may and may not be used, which is why a simple find and replace over English text does not produce correct Grade 2 braille.

• Grade 1: one cell per letter, plus indicators for capitals and numbers.
• Grade 2: adds around 180 contractions and short forms. Standard for books, menus and signs.
• Unified English Braille (UEB) is the current standard in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US.
• Nemeth Code is a separate braille code for mathematics, still widely used in the US alongside UEB.

Unicode braille is a picture of braille, not braille

This is the important caveat on a page like this one. The characters here are visual symbols that draw six dot patterns on a screen. Copying them into a document does not make that document accessible to a braille reader, any more than typing a picture of speech makes an audio file.

Someone who reads braille reads it with their fingers, from paper embossed on a braille embosser or from a refreshable braille display. A blind person using a screen reader on a page full of Unicode braille characters will hear them announced as braille pattern dots one, braille pattern dots one two, and so on, or hear nothing useful at all. It is close to unreadable.

So use these characters for what they are good for: teaching, charts, labelling a diagram, design work, and showing a sighted person what a braille cell looks like. If you need genuine braille output, send the text itself to a transcription service or a braille embosser and let proper transcription software handle the contractions and the layout.

Braille displays, embossers and screen readers

A refreshable braille display is a strip of cells, usually 14, 40 or 80 of them, with small pins that rise and fall under the fingertips. It connects to a computer or phone by USB or Bluetooth and works alongside a screen reader such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver or TalkBack. Whatever the screen reader would speak, the display shows in braille instead, one line at a time.

This matters more than it might sound. Listening to synthetic speech is fine for prose but poor for spelling, punctuation, code, tables and mathematics. A braille display gives a deaf-blind user access at all, and gives any braille reader the ability to check exact characters, which speech cannot do reliably.

For the developer's version of the same point: your page becomes readable in braille when the underlying text and structure are correct. Real headings, alt text, labelled form fields and proper table markup all flow through the screen reader to the braille display. Braille accessibility is mostly just good HTML.

How to type braille characters

The Unicode braille block runs from U+2800 (a blank cell) to U+28FF. The characters are laid out by a bit pattern, so each dot has a value: dot 1 adds 1, dot 2 adds 2, dot 3 adds 4, dot 4 adds 8, dot 5 adds 16, dot 6 adds 32. Add up the dots you want and add the total to 2800 in hexadecimal.

The letter c is dots 1 and 4, so 1 plus 8 is 9, and the character is U+2809. On Windows in Microsoft Word you can type 2809 and press ALT + X. On a Mac, use the Character Viewer or a Unicode hex input source. Everywhere else, the copy buttons above are faster.

For entering actual braille text, the standard method is a six key Perkins-style layout: the keys S, D, F and J, K, L stand for dots 3-2-1 and 4-5-6, pressed together as a chord. Both iOS and Android include this as Braille Screen Input, and most braille displays have the same six keys built in.