Braille Translator
Type text and see it in Grade 1 (uncontracted) Unified English Braille: one cell per letter, the capital indicator before capitals, the numeric indicator before numbers. Paste Braille cells to read them back as text. The output is Unicode Braille, for reading on screen or in print, not a file for an embosser.
How to use the braille translator
- Type or paste text. The Braille cells appear as you type.
- Capitals and numbers get their indicators automatically; write them as you normally would.
- To read Braille, switch to Braille to text and paste the cells.
- Copy the result. It is Unicode text and pastes anywhere that accepts text.
Examples
| Hello | ⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕ |
| Room 204 | ⠠⠗⠕⠕⠍ ⠼⠃⠚⠙ |
| NASA landed in 1969. | ⠠⠠⠝⠁⠎⠁ ⠇⠁⠝⠙⠑⠙ ⠊⠝ ⠼⠁⠊⠋⠊⠲ |
About Braille
Braille is a writing system read by touch. Louis Braille, blinded in childhood, published it in 1829 at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, adapting a twelve-dot military system into a cell of six raised dots, three high and two wide. Six dots in two columns give 64 possible patterns, enough for an alphabet, digits, punctuation and a set of indicators that change how the following cells are read. The first ten letters, a to j, use only the top four dots; k to t add the lower left dot to each of them; u, v, x, y and z add both lower dots. The letter w, which French did not need in 1829, was fitted in later, which is why it breaks the pattern.
English-speaking countries adopted Unified English Braille, or UEB, between 2004 and 2016 to replace several earlier codes with one. UEB has two levels. Grade 1, also called uncontracted braille, writes every letter of every word. Grade 2, or contracted braille, adds around 180 contractions and short forms, so that "the" is one cell and "knowledge" is written with two, and it is what most books and signs use because it is a third shorter to read and to emboss. Grade 1 is what children learn first, what appears on medicine boxes and elevator buttons where every letter must be certain, and what a sighted person can learn to read in an afternoon from a chart.
This translator produces Grade 1 UEB. Every letter gets its own cell. A capital letter is preceded by the capital indicator, dot 6, and a word written entirely in capitals is preceded by two of them, which UEB calls the capitalized word indicator. Numbers use the numeric indicator, dots 3-4-5-6, followed by the digits written with the letters a to j: 1 is a, 2 is b, and 0 is j, and the indicator is written once for a run of digits. The basic punctuation marks are covered: period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semicolon, hyphen, apostrophe, quotation mark, parentheses, slash and the at sign. Characters outside the table are passed through unchanged rather than dropped, so a symbol the tool does not know stays visible in the output. Accented letters are folded to their base letter before conversion, so "café" comes out as "cafe"; UEB has its own signs for accented letters, and this tool does not write them.
What appears on screen is Unicode, from the Braille Patterns block at U+2800, which has one character for each of the 256 six- and eight-dot cells. That makes the output ordinary text: it can be copied into a document, a message or a label design, printed, and read by anyone who knows the alphabet. It is not a file for a braille embosser. Embossers and refreshable displays work from transcription software that knows page dimensions, line lengths and formatting conventions, and a properly transcribed document needs a certified transcriber. Use this page to learn the alphabet, check a label, write a name on a card or produce visual braille for a poster, and use proper transcription for anything a blind reader will actually read by touch.
The decoder reverses the process. Paste Braille cells and it reads the capital indicator, the capitalized word indicator and the numeric indicator, turns a to j back into digits after the numeric indicator until the first non-digit cell or space, and maps the single-cell letters and punctuation back to text. It expects Grade 1 input; contracted braille will decode as the letters its cells stand for in Grade 1, so a Grade 2 "the" will not come back as the word.
Frequently asked questions
Is this Grade 1 or Grade 2 Braille?
Grade 1 only, which UEB calls uncontracted braille: one cell per letter, no contractions. Grade 2 uses about 180 contractions and short forms and is what most printed braille uses, but applying them correctly depends on rules about syllables and word boundaries that need a transcriber or dedicated software. If you need Grade 2, this page will not produce it.
Why is there an extra cell before capital letters and numbers?
Braille has only 64 cells, so capitals and digits are not separate symbols. The capital indicator (dot 6, ⠠) marks the next letter as a capital, and two of them mark a whole word as capitals. The numeric indicator (⠼) says that the cells that follow are digits written with the letters a to j: ⠼⠁⠃ is 12. This is standard UEB, not a quirk of the tool.
Can I print this or send it to an embosser?
You can print it as a visual representation, on a poster, a card or a worksheet, and any braille reader who sees it enlarged, or a sighted person, can read it. It is not an embosser file. Embossers take files produced by transcription software that handles page layout, line breaks and formatting, and documents meant to be read by touch should be transcribed by someone certified to do so.
Does it decode Braille too?
Yes. Paste Unicode Braille cells and it returns text, honoring the capital, capitalized word and numeric indicators, so ⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕ reads back as Hello and ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠋ as 2026. It assumes Grade 1: contracted cells from Grade 2 text are read as the letters they stand for in Grade 1.
What about accents, emoji and other symbols?
Accented letters are folded to their plain form first, so é becomes the cell for e. UEB has its own way of writing accented letters that this tool does not produce. Symbols outside the table, including emoji and letters from other alphabets, are passed through as they are rather than dropped.
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