The Braille alphabet

The Braille alphabet, often misspelled as the ‘braile alphabet’, is a writing system for the blind. The Braille system was first developed by a Frenchman, named Louis Braille, in the mid 19th century. And thus, this is where the name ‘Braile’ derives from. In full, this alphabet is named the ‘Louis Braille alphabet.

Braile can be made using various different tools, the most common tools being; the slate and stylus, the Braille typewriter (Perkins Brailler,) and the Braille embosser. The purpose of these tools are to push and or punch holes into a flat surface, enabling the blind person to read these dotted punches using there hand/finger tips. They go over the Braille surface with their hand/fingertips and recognise the dots. They would have learned the braile alphabet structure, and learned how the dots and how they are positioned and structures in the Braille cell represents words, letter and so on.

The brail system consists of the arrangement of one or more dots, to make up and represent letters, numbers, punctuations, words and/or abbreviations. These dots are arranged in a 2 by 6 rectangular cell structure known as the ‘Braille Cell’. Bellow is an image of a Braille cell.


Braille Cell:

The diagram to the left is the 'Braille cell'. The Braille cell is arranged in a 2 by 6 rectangular structure, with three dots above and two dots across.


Here is a Braille chart showing the Braille system in letters:






And here is another chart showing the Braille numbers:




Useful links:

Sample Braille text and more Braille Information:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/braille.htm

Braille in other languages:
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/codes/braille.html

In-depth history of Braille:
http://www.nyise.org/blind/

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