Braille Alphabet & Patterns
The standard braille alphabet (Grade 1, unified English) followed by all 256 Unicode braille patterns. Numbers use the digit letters a–j preceded by the number sign ⠼, and capitals are marked with ⠠. Click any cell to copy the character.
Braille cells are six dots, numbered 1 to 3 down the left column and 4 to 6 down the right. Unicode encodes all 256 possible dot combinations, including the 8-dot computer braille that adds dots 7 and 8 on a fourth row.
Braille alphabet A–Z 26
Marks you’ll need 7
All 256 braille patterns 256
Why most braille patterns have no fixed meaning
Many people are surprised when they scroll past the alphabet above and the patterns stop being letters. This is because a braille cell is a shape, not a character. Unicode simply catalogues all 256 possible dot combinations and names each one after the dots that are raised. The cell ⠧ is officially called "dots-1236", and that name is its entire definition.
Meaning comes from whichever braille code happens to be reading the cell. In English literary braille, dots 1-2-3-6 is the letter v. The very same cell stands for something else in French braille, in maths notation and in music braille. You can think of it as one alphabet of shapes with many languages laid on top, which is why this chart labels each pattern by its dot numbers, just as the Unicode standard does, rather than pretending there is one universal meaning.
So what about dots 7 and 8 on the bottom row? Those come from computer braille. A refreshable braille display needs exactly one cell for every character on screen, so anything literary braille spells with two cells gets squeezed into one. A capital V, normally written as the capital sign ⠠ followed by ⠧, becomes the single cell ⡧ with dot 7 added. Screen readers rely on that trick to keep the braille lined up with the text under the cursor.