Text to Braille Translator
Convert any English text into braille and back again — in both Grade 1 (uncontracted) and Grade 2 (contracted) Unified English Braille. See the raised-dot patterns for every cell, hear your text read aloud, and export it as BRF for a braille embosser or as plain Unicode. Capitals and numbers are handled automatically. The full A–Z and 0–9 chart is below.
How the Braille Translator Works
Braille is a tactile writing system used by blind and visually impaired people. Each character sits in a "cell" of up to six raised dots arranged in two columns of three. This tool uses Unified English Braille (UEB), Grade 1 — also called uncontracted braille — which maps every printed letter, number and common punctuation mark to its own braille cell, one-for-one. That direct mapping is what makes it possible to convert text to braille and braille back to text without ambiguity.
The braille you see is made from real Unicode braille characters (the Braille Patterns block, U+2800–U+28FF), so you can copy it and paste it anywhere that supports Unicode. On a refreshable braille display or braille embosser these same codes drive the physical dots.
Full A–Z Braille Alphabet
Numbers 0–9
Digits reuse the cells for the letters A–J, but they are preceded by the number sign ⠼ (dots 3-4-5-6) so a reader knows they are numbers, not letters.
Capitals & Punctuation
- Capital letters — a single capital is marked with the capital sign ⠠ (dot 6) before the letter, so "A" becomes ⠠⠁. A word written in all capitals gets the double capital sign ⠠⠠ at the start.
- Punctuation — common marks are supported: full stop ⠲, comma ⠂, question mark ⠦, exclamation ⠖, semicolon ⠆, colon ⠒, apostrophe ⠄, hyphen ⠤, quotation ⠶ and parentheses ⠐⠣ ⠐⠜.
- Spaces — a space becomes a blank braille cell (⠀). Any character the tool doesn't recognise is passed through unchanged.
Grade 1 vs Grade 2 Braille
Grade 1 (uncontracted) braille spells every word out letter by letter — a clean one-to-one mapping that converts perfectly in both directions and is the standard for learning braille, labels and short text. Grade 2 (contracted) braille adds shortcuts to save space and speed up reading: whole-word signs (for example "the" → ⠮) and group signs (like "ch", "th", "er" and "ing") each collapse to a single cell. Switch between them with the Grade 1 / Grade 2 buttons above. This tool covers the common UEB contractions; Grade 1 remains the fully exact, reversible mode.
Common Grade 2 Contractions
These are some of the most frequent contractions used in Grade 2. Group signs (ch, sh, th…) appear anywhere in a word; word signs (the, and, for…) stand for a whole word.
More Than a Converter
- Visual dot cells — every braille cell is drawn as its raised-dot pattern, so you can see exactly which of the six dots are used. Toggle the dot numbers option to label each cell (for example ⠓ = 1-2-5).
- Braille ASCII / BRF export — copy or download a
.brffile in the standard interchange format that braille embossers and translation software accept. - Read aloud — hear the plain text spoken using your browser's built-in speech, handy when checking a translation.
- Download & print — save the braille as a Unicode
.txtfile or print a clean reference sheet.
Privacy
Everything is converted in your browser with JavaScript. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or stored on any server.