Braille Translator

Braille represents each letter with a cell of up to six raised dots. This translator converts English text to Unicode Braille characters and back using Unified English Braille (UEB) Grade 1 — the uncontracted form where every letter is spelled out. It adds the capital, capitalised-word and number indicators for you, keeps numbers like 3.14 and 1,000 in one numeric run, and can list the dot numbers of every cell.

How to use this tool

1. Type text to get Braille, or paste Braille to read it.
2. Leave the direction on Auto-detect, or force one way.
3. Turn on dot numbers to see which dots make up each cell.
4. Copy the Unicode Braille — it pastes into any app that has a Braille-capable font.

Formula

Unicode places the 64 six-dot Braille cells at U+2800–U+283F: a cell’s code is U+2800 plus a bitmask with dot 1 as the lowest bit through dot 6. A capital letter is preceded by ⠠, a word in capitals by ⠠⠠, and a number by ⠼, which stays in force through digits, decimal points and commas.

Because the digits 1–0 reuse the letters a–j, a letter a–j that follows a number gets the grade 1 indicator ⠰ so it is not read as another digit. Several signs take two cells in UEB, such as ( = ⠐⠣ and $ = ⠈⠎.

Example

"hello" becomes ⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕, "HELLO" becomes ⠠⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕, and "3.14" becomes ⠼⠉⠲⠁⠙ — the number sign, then c, the decimal point ⠲, then a and d standing for 1 and 4.