Braille Bits
by Eleanor PesterAPH is the largest producer of English Braille in the world, producing 28,000,000 pages last year. As such, we would like to let you know more about braille. From time to time, Braille Bits will include interesting facts about braille, tips for learning braille, or reports on research about braille. Since our audience includes both people who are avid, longtime users of braille as well as people to whom braille has some vague connection with people who are blind, Braille Bits will contain information on a variety of levels. Please send any ideas or thoughts you have for Braille Bits to Eleanor Pester, Research Scientist, at epester@aph.org. Thank you for your interest and your help.
- Braille is composed of from one to six raised dots depicted in a cell or space which contains room for two vertical rows of three dots each. On the left the dots are numbered from top to bottom 1, 2, and 3; on the right the dots are numbered 4, 5, and 6. This makes it easy to describe braille characters. For example, a is dot 1, p is dots 1, 2, 3, and 4, and h is dots 1, 2, and 5.
- Did you know that in braille any letter becomes a capital by putting dot 6 in front of it? For example, if a is dot 1, A is dot 6 followed by dot 1 and if p is dots 1, 2, 3, and 4, P is dot 6 followed by dots 1, 2, 3, and 4. This sure is easier than print which requires different configurations for more than half of the capital letters. If h is dots 1, 2, and 5, what is H?
- Research has shown that the fastest braille readers use two hands. Using two hands also seems to make it easier for beginning braille readers to stay on the line. Do you think this might have something to do with two points constituting a line as my geometry teacher used to tell us?