Braille Translator

Braille is the writing system of blind and partially sighted people, read by touch: every character is a cell of up to six raised dots. Unicode has a symbol for each of the 64 possible cells, so braille can be shown on a screen, copied and pasted like ordinary text. The translator turns every letter, digit and punctuation mark into these symbols, puts the number sign before numbers and, in English braille, the capital sign before capital letters. It also translates braille symbols back into text.

Two codes are available. English uses Unified English Braille (UEB) grade 1, the uncontracted braille in which every letter is written out, and letters with accents, such as é, get their own signs. Russian braille has its own cells for the Cyrillic letters and doesn't mark capital letters. Contracted braille, with its abbreviations for whole words, isn't supported, and many languages have braille codes of their own. To print braille that can be read by touch, you need a braille embosser: the symbols on the screen are for viewing, sharing and learning.