Decoder
Braille decoder: braille to text
Paste Unicode braille characters, or type dot numbers like 125-15-123-123-135, and read it back as plain English text.
Text
The decoded text will appear here.
Why decoding is not always certain
Reading braille back into text is not perfectly reversible. Dots 2-3-6 is both a question mark and an opening quotation mark. In Grade 2 the same cell can be a whole word in one position and a letter group in another, and without the original text there is no way to be sure which was meant.
The decoder decides by position: dots 2-3-6 at the start of a word is read as the quotation mark, and at the end of one as the question mark. Where the result looks odd, the cause may be an ambiguity in the code and not a mistake in your input.
If you are decoding something contracted — a book, a sign — switch to Grade 2. Left on Grade 1, a wordsign is read as its letter — ⠃, the word “but”, comes back as b — and a cell that is no letter at all is left out and named under the result: “shop”, written ⠩⠕⠏, comes back as op. The contraction list shows which cells behave this way, and the translator goes the other direction, from text into braille.
This decoder wants a passage. For a single cell you are stuck on — one you can feel but cannot name — the dot-number lookup takes the raised dots and gives back every reading that cell has, which is usually more than one.
Questions and answers
How do I convert braille back into text?
Paste Unicode braille characters, or type dot numbers like 125-15-123-123-135, and it reads back as plain text.
Why is decoding braille not always certain?
Because most cells mean several things at once. Which reading applies is decided by where the cell sits, so the same cell can be a letter, a contraction or a punctuation mark depending on context.