Turn English text into Unicode braille cells, or braille back into text. Numbers, capitals and punctuation follow UEB.
This tool translates English text into Unified English Braille (UEB) Grade 1, also called uncontracted braille, and writes it as Unicode braille characters from the block U+2800 to U+28FF, so you can copy it into a document, a sign design or a message. Grade 1 spells every word letter by letter: hello is five cells, one for each letter. Paste braille cells instead and the tool reads them back into English. Auto direction decides by counting: if most of the non-space characters are braille cells, the box is read as braille. You can force either direction. The rules come from the ICEB document Rules of Unified English Braille, the standard for English-speaking countries. It does not translate Grade 2, the contracted form that most printed braille books use.
Braille has only 63 cells with dots in a 2 by 3 grid, so some cells do several jobs. Digits 1 to 9 and 0 reuse the cells for the letters a to j, and a numeric indicator (dots 3456) tells the reader that a number follows. It is written once for a whole number, and a decimal point or comma between digits keeps the number going, so 5.30 is one number. If a letter from a to j follows a digit, a grade 1 indicator (dots 56) comes first, so 1a is not read as 11. Capitals use dot 6 before one letter, two dot-6 cells before a word of capitals, and three before a passage of three or more capital words, which ends with a dot 6, dot 3 terminator. Punctuation uses single cells for the period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation mark, question mark, apostrophe and hyphen, and two-cell signs for quotation marks, brackets, the dash and symbols such as the at sign.
Grade 2 is not covered. Contracted braille has wordsigns such as a single cell for the word and, groupsigns for letter pairs such as th and ch, and shortforms. Real braille text for a reader is usually Grade 2, so use this tool for learning, labels, names, short signs and checking Grade 1 text, not for a book. Typeform indicators for bold, italic and underline, mathematics and music braille, computer braille, and languages other than English are also left out. A character with no Grade 1 symbol here, such as an accented letter or an emoji, is kept as it is and counted. Cells that are not Grade 1 symbols when reading braille are kept as cells and counted. A braille embosser or a braille display may also expect a different, older character table, so check the result there before relying on it.
Turn on Show the cell table to list the dot numbers of the first 30 cells. Dots are numbered 1, 2, 3 down the left column and 4, 5, 6 down the right, so the letter h, dots 1, 2 and 5, has the top two left dots and the middle right dot raised. Use the table to learn a cell or to check a sign. The translation happens in your browser, in this tab. The text is not uploaded or stored, only your option choices are remembered. Unicode braille is plain text, so it can be copied into other apps, but how it looks depends on the font: a few fonts draw the cells as dots, others as boxes. If your device shows boxes, install a font with a braille block, or paste the text into a braille display program.
Type it with a capital first letter. Sam gives ⠠⠎⠁⠍: one cell for the capital sign (dot 6), then s, a and m. A name in all capitals such as SAM gets two dot-6 cells in front of the word instead.
A numeric indicator (dots 3456) comes first, then the cells for a to j stand for 1 to 9 and 0. So 911 is ⠼⠊⠁⠁. The indicator is written once, and a point or comma between digits, as in 5.30 or 1,000, keeps the number going.
Grade 1 only. Every word is spelled letter by letter. Grade 2 uses contractions: and, for, of, the and with each have a one-cell sign, and groupsigns such as th and ch are single cells. This tool does not produce or read those.
Unicode has 256 braille patterns from U+2800 to U+28FF: the blank cell plus every combination of 8 dots. English braille uses only the 6-dot ones, 63 of them. The text is plain, so you can copy it into any app.
Your font has no glyphs for the braille block. The characters are still correct and copy correctly. Use a font that includes U+2800 to U+28FF, or paste the text into an app that does.
Yes, for Grade 1. Paste cells such as ⠠⠓⠊ and the result is Hi. Numbers after the numeric indicator come back as digits. Any cell that is not a Grade 1 symbol, like a Grade 2 contraction, is kept as a cell and counted.