About
Braille: frequently asked questions
Straight answers, including the ones where the honest answer is “not reliably”.
Is braille the same in every language?
No. The six-dot cell is universal, but what each cell means changes by language. Dots 2-3-4-6 is the word “the” in English braille, the letter é in Spanish and the letter thal in Arabic — one cell, three answers. This site publishes five codes in full and keeps them apart: Unified English Braille, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Hindi, each measured against the reference implementation for its own language.
Can I just copy the braille output and print it?
You can copy it, but printing it on a normal printer produces flat ink shapes, not raised dots, so it cannot be read by touch. Physical braille needs an embosser, a braille writer, or a slate and stylus. A page printed in ink is read by eye.
What is the difference between Grade 1 and Grade 2?
Grade 1 gives every letter its own cell. Grade 2 writes common words and letter groups in fewer cells — a standalone b means 'but', and one cell covers 'ing'. On signs in the United States the ADA Standards require Grade 2. The full comparison sets out when each is used.
Is the Grade 2 output here good enough to emboss?
Not without checking. This site covers the contraction system — wordsigns, groupsigns, all 75 shortforms and the initial- and final-letter contractions — and matches the reference translator on 4,999 of the 5,000 commonest English words. It is reliable for learning and checking your work in the translator. If it is going to be embossed for someone to rely on, have a qualified transcriber review it — what is and is not covered is listed in full.
Why do numbers look like letters?
Because they are the same cells. The number sign, dots 3-4-5-6, tells the reader that the letters that follow are digits: a becomes 1, b becomes 2, and so on up to j, which becomes 0.
Do I need to install a braille font?
No. The dots on this site are drawn as real page elements, and the copyable output from the translator uses standard Unicode braille characters, not a font of its own. Nothing needs installing to read this site.
Does this site work with a screen reader?
It is built to be read with one. Every drawn braille cell carries a text label naming its raised dots — 'dots 1, 4 and 5' — which is what a screen reader is given in place of the drawing. The tables for numbers, punctuation and contractions are real HTML tables with headers, and they and the alphabet are in the page itself, not added by JavaScript. If something reads badly, that is a bug: the about page says where to report it.