HesapHanem

Braille (Grade 1) Translator

Choose a direction and enter text or Braille to translate.

How it is calculated

The tool converts text to uncontracted (Grade 1) Braille using Unicode Braille characters, one cell per character. Each letter a to z maps to its cell. A capital letter is preceded by the capital sign (⠠). A run of digits starts with the number sign (⠼) and then uses the cells for a to j for 1 to 9 and 0, and the number sign is not repeated until a non-digit appears. A letter a to j right after digits gets the letter sign (⠰), so 12a becomes ⠼⠁⠃⠰⠁. Spaces and line breaks are kept, and the punctuation marks . , ; : ! ? ' - have their own cells. Any other character, including accented letters, brackets, quotation marks and symbols, is silently skipped. In Braille-to-text mode the same table is reversed, the letter sign is read as the end of the number, and line breaks are kept. Contractions (Grade 2) are not supported.

Worked example

Translate Hello 2026. The capital H becomes the capital sign plus the h cell (⠠⠓), then e, l, l, o give ⠑⠇⠇⠕. The space is kept. The digits 2, 0, 2, 6 get one number sign followed by the cells for b, j, b, f. The result is ⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕ ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠋. Decoding this string in Braille-to-text mode returns Hello 2026.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Expecting accented letters or punctuation outside the supported list to appear. The tool drops them without warning, so café becomes caf in Braille.
  • Assuming the output is contracted Braille as in most books. This is Grade 1 only, with one cell per letter, so it is longer than published Grade 2 text.
  • Using the output as a physical Braille file or embosser input without checking. These are Unicode characters for screens, and your printer or embosser may need a Braille translation table.
  • Translating non-English text. Other languages use their own cell assignments for letters such as ç or ö, and these are not provided.
  • Pasting Braille with a mix of letters and digits and expecting numbers to decode without the number sign; in decoding, digits only appear after ⠼.

About this calculator

Grade 1 (uncontracted) Braille represents each letter, digit and punctuation mark with its own six-dot cell — a 2×3 grid where each of the six positions is either raised or flat, giving 63 possible patterns. The Unicode Braille block (U+2800-U+28FF) assigns a code point to every one of those patterns, so text can be translated dot-for-dot into Braille characters and decoded back the same way.

Braille educators and students use this to check translations while learning the dot patterns, sighted people creating labels, signage or accessible documents use it to produce correct Grade 1 Braille without memorizing the cell chart, and developers testing Braille displays or screen-reader output use it to verify Unicode Braille encoding.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    Numbers need care when you copy the output. The tool puts the number sign before a digit run, and a letter a to j straight after digits gets the letter sign, so 12a comes out as ⠼⠁⠃⠰⠁ and decodes back to 12a. Characters outside the table, such as accented letters, are skipped, so check the result on screen before sending it anywhere. Which words or phrases are you translating?

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