Braille Basics

History of Braille Developed by Louis Braille 1809—Born near Paris, France 1813—Lost his vision 1819—Attended Parisian blind school 1821—Charles Barbier introduced 12-dot “Night Writing” 1827—First Braille book published

Braille Overview Uncontracted (formerly Grade One) Braille consists of the 26-letter alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. Contracted (formerly Grade Two) Braille adds 189 contractions and short-form words.

Braille Cell All Braille characters are based on six dots called a Braille cell.

A through J The first 10 letters of the alphabet are made using the top four dots in the Braille cell (dots 1-2-4-5).

K through T The next 10 letters of the alphabet are made by adding dot three to the first 10 letters.

U through Z The last six letters of the alphabet are created by adding dot 6. What happened to “W”? It was added later and does not quite fit the pattern.

Braille Alphabet

That’s nice, but… How do we remember the alphabet?

Braille and Print You already know the print alphabet, and the Braille letters look like the print letters. Let’s connect the dots!

Standard Braille Alphabet

Connect the Dots

Numbers Braille uses a special sign (dots 3-4-5-6) to show that what follows is a number. Logically, this sign is called…the number sign!

Letters to Numbers Braille uses the first 10 letters of the alphabet, preceded by the number sign, to stand for the single-digit numbers. “a” is 1, “b” is 2, “c” is 3, etc. through “j,” which is 0

Numbers in Literary Braille 3 = #c 4 = #d 5 = #e 6 = #f 7 = #g 8 = #h 9 = #i 0 = #j

Multidigit Numbers 12 = #ab 25 = #be 30 = #cj 46 = #df 51 = #ea 63 = #fc 74 = #gd 87 = #hg 99 = #ii 101 = #aja

More Information Braille references BANA www.brailleauthority.org