Braille Translator

see notes below

Making Braille Signs, Notes, etc

You can use this translation tool to print out the Braille for signs, notes, and so on.

There are a few different sizes and styles to choose from.

You can Print the image, or Save the image to create a ".png" of the Braille dots (right click, "save image as...") for sending in an email or later printing.

After printing, you can put drops of paint or glue on each black dot, or you could punch little holes (from the reverse side), so that the pattern is easy to feel.

Cut-and-Paste

Text Dots: You can copy the dots under "Text Dots" and paste them into an email or forum when discussing braille.

ASCII: You can copy the text under "ASCII" and paste it into a word processor. Then use a Braille Font (download "gh-mathspeak.com" fonts here, unzip and put into fonts folder), and you can format the page any way you want.

Grade 1

Grade 1 Braille is simple letter-by-letter translation. There should be no confusion using this method.

Grade 2

Official Grade 2 Braille has 189 contractions (combinations of letters or entire words can become one Braille character), with many complicated rules.

This tool uses all the contractions, but cannot follow all the rules because that needs a deeper understanding that only a human has. For example, the combination "wh" can be replaced by one character, except when the word is really two words combined. So a(wh)ile is OK, but ra(wh)ide is not. Our tool will get that wrong ...

... so Grade 2 translation can only be done properly by a human!

But 98% of the time our translation is good.