Braille Lesson

This page has been created to satisfy sighted people's desire to learn braille. I have had tons of people ask me to show them the braille alphabet, or ask me whether I could teach them braille. Usually I don't have time to teach them, so I have made this Web page so that I can direct them here!

Note that this page uses a braille font to display braille characters. If you do not have a braille font, the braille sections of this page will appear as gibberish.

If you can see the row of braille cells (groups of 6 dots) below, then you have the braille font on your system. If the row looks like a row of equal signs (=====), then you do not have the braille font installed.

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Most people know what braille is. Braille is that wonderful system of tactile reading used by blind and visually impaired people who cannot see print easily enough to read it. Braille is read by moving your fingers lightly over the line of dots, similar to moving your eyes along a line of print. Sighted people (those with normal vision) can learn to read braille by sight, rather than touch. This page teaches you how to read grade 1 braille by sight.

The entire braille system is based on only six dots. These six dots are arranged in two columns of three dots; this arrangement of dots is called a braille cell. By using different combinations of dots in this cell, a maximum of 62 characters can be made. A braille cell looks like this:

To make writing and referencing braille symbols easier, each dot in the braille cell has a number. Down the left hand side, starting from the top, it is numbered 1, 2, 3. Down the right hand side, again starting from the top, it is 4, 5, 6. Here is a diagram to help you:

Because of the limited number of symbols available in the braille system, there are no unique signs for capital letters. Instead, a capital sign is used. The capital sign is made by using dot 6, or the lower right-hand dot. When the capital sign is placed before a letter, that letter is capitalized. When two capital signs are placed in a row in front of a word, that means that that whole word is capitalized. Here are some examples:

Joe Smith
,joe ,smith

NASA
,,nasa

McDonald's
,mc,donald's

SARAH McLACHLAN
,,sarah ,mc,,lachlan

Do you understand the capital sign now? Good! Numbers work in a similar way. There are no unique signs for numbers. Instead, a number sign is used. When the number sign is put in front of the first 10 letters of the alphabet, A-J, they become the letters 1-0. The number sign is dots 3, 4, 5, and 6. It looks like this:

When you write a number that is more than one digit, like 2001, you do not have to repeat the number sign before each letter, only before the first letter, in this case the 2.

Here are the letters 1-0, as well as some examples of how to write letters and dates.

Dates, addresses, and things like phone numbers can also be written in braille:

(604) 948-4859
7#fjd7 #idh-dhei

December 6th, 1981
,december #fth" #aiha

There are no mathematical symbols in Grade 1 braille, so whenever you have symbols like +, =, x, etc., you must write them out as words. Like this:

7 + 3 = 10
#g plus #c equals #aj

The two symbols that you just learned about, the capital sign and number sign appear only in braille, and there is no equivalant to them in print. There are several other symbols that are like this: they appear only in braille and have no print equivalant. I will tell you about two of these symbols that are useful in Grade 1 braille. You don't need to know these to write Grade 1 braille. In fact, with what you've learned so far you could easily communicate with a visually impaired person. However, you might be interested in these symbols if you want to go on and learn more braille.

The first of these symbols is the italic sign. As you might guess, there is no such thing as italic braille. Therefore, when italics or bold font appear in print, there must be a way of shoing this in braille. This is accomplished by using the italic sign.

The italic sign is formed by using dots 4 and 6, or the top and bottom dots on the left-hand side. Like this:

When an italic sign appears before a word, that word is in italics. When two italic signs appear before a word, then that word and all words that follow it are in italics, until the italics are cancelled by another single italic sign. The word after that single italic sign is still in italics, but anything after that is just normal text again. Here are some examples:

Did you have to do that?
,did you .have to do that8

We had to read Lord of the Flies for homework.
,We had to read ..,Lord of the .,Flies for homework4

The single italic sign is used when there are three words or less. When there are more than three words, that is when you use the double italic sign cancelled by the single italic sign.

The second sign I will tell you about is the letter sign. This sign has many uses in Grade 2 braille, but in Grade 1 braille it is used to tell a number or a letter apart when they are mixed together, like in a postal code. The letter sign is dots 5 and 6, or the lower two dots on the left-hand side, like this:

The only situation you would need to use this sign in in Grade 1 braille is in a postal code or other situation where numbers and letters are mixed. In Grade 2 braille it is also used to diffinterate between a letter and a contraction, but you will learn that if you want to go on and learn Grade 2 braille through another source.

You will remember earlier that when a number sign is placed before the letters A-J, they become numbers. But what happens it you have something like 1a, where the A is supposed to be interpreted as an A, and not a 1? If you wrote it without a letter sign, it would look like this:

#aa

Now, if you did not know what that was supposed to say, and were only reading the braille as it appears there, you would read it as 11. That's where the letter sign comes in! If you want that second 1 to be interpreted as an A, you would put a letter sign before it, so that the reader would know that it is an A and that the number sign is cancelled. Like this:

1a
#a;a

Here are some other examples of using the letter sign:

v9g 2k5
v#i;g #bk#e

Room 26c
,room #bf;c

A23
,a#bc

Notice that in the postal code, v9g 2k5, no italic sign was used on the K. This is because a K cannot be a number, so the reader will know it is a letter even without the letter sign. Also notice that on A23 no letter sign was used, because there wes no number sign to cancel.

Congratulations! If you have gotten this far, you can now read Grade 1 braille! Now all you need to do is practice.

Below are links to different pages I have created that have practice exercises on them. Pick which area or difficulty you would like to practice, and click on that link. At the bottom of each practice page there will be a link back to this page.

There are several ways of writing braille. Although I can't teach you to write braille over the Internet, I can describe how to do it, in case you happen to have some braille writing equipment you'd like to practice with. There are two main ways of writing braille: the slate and stylus and the braillewriter. There are also braille printers, or embossers that can hook up to computers and print braille, but these are mostly used by braille transcribers and braille readers. There are also braille notetakers, which use a braille keyboard to input braille. These are used exclusively by visually impaired braille readers.

With all this talk about Grade 1 and Grade 2 braille, you may be wondering what these grades mean. All these two terms really mean is uncontracted braille and contracted braille. You just learned Grade 1, or uncontracted, braille. Uncontracted means that all the words were spelled out letter-by-letter. Grade 2 braille uses contractions and abbreviations to save space and speed up reading time. A contraction is a symbol that stands for a word or a part of a word. For example, in Grade 2 braille, the symbol ! stands for the word "the". An abbreviation is a group of letters that stands for an entire word. For example, in Grade 2 braille the letters "brl" stand for the word "braille".

Grade 2 braille also contains many rules about how to use the contractions and abbreviations, and is a bit more complex than Grade 1. If you are interested in learning Grade 2 braille, or even other braille codes, I have provided some resources for you in the next section.