English to braille translator
Type or paste English and see it in braille as you type: uncontracted (Grade 1) Unified English Braille, with capitals, numbers and punctuation. Copy the result as Unicode braille.
How it translates
- ⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕HelloDot 6 before a capital letter.
- ⠠⠠⠥⠎⠁USATwo capital signs for a word in capitals.
- ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠋2026The number sign, then a–j for the digits.
- ⠼⠉⠲⠑3.5A decimal point stays inside the number.
- ⠼⠉⠰⠁3aDots 5-6 before a–j after a digit, so a reads as a letter, not 1.
- ⠊⠞⠄⠎it'sThe apostrophe is dot 3.
- ⠦⠠⠓⠊⠖⠴"Hi!"Opening and closing quotes are different cells.
Symbols
Beyond the punctuation, most symbols take two cells: a prefix cell, then the symbol.
- ⠐⠣(opening bracket
- ⠐⠜)closing bracket
- ⠦“opening quote
- ⠴”closing quote
- ⠸⠌/slash
- ⠈⠯&ersand
- ⠈⠁@at sign
- ⠈⠎$dollar
- ⠨⠴%percent
- ⠸⠹#number sign (hash)
- ⠐⠖+plus
- ⠐⠶=equals
- ⠠⠤—dash
- ⠲⠲⠲…ellipsis
What it doesn't do
It writes every letter out (Grade 1). Books, signs and labels mostly use Grade 2, where common words and letter groups take one cell; see the Grade 2 contractions. It also leaves out accented letters and maths notation, and marks each capitalised word separately rather than a whole capitalised passage. For anything official, such as signage, menus or documents, have it checked by a certified braille transcriber.
Remember it, don't just look it up
A translator looks it up for you; reading it yourself takes the alphabet. Braille a Day brings it back tomorrow to answer from memory, then again just before you'd forget. Five minutes a day.