page_title: Braille
section_title: Form
hierarchical_section_title: Braille / Form
caption_attribution_description: Português: Alianças em prata com nomes escritos em Braille English: Wedding rings with Braille inscriptions Deutsch: Eheringe mit Namensinschrift in Brailleschrift aus Schmucksteinen (links (über Kopf) „TITA“, rechts „HENRI...E“)
context_page_description: Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. It is traditionally written with embossed paper. Braille users can read computer screens and other electronic supports using refreshable braille displays. They can write braille with the original slate and stylus or type it on a braille writer, such as a portable braille notetaker or computer that prints with a braille embosser.
  Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed a code for the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which subsequently included musical notation, in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837, was the first small binary form of writing developed in the modern era.
  These characters have rectangular blocks called cells that have tiny bumps called raised dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another.
context_section_description: Braille was the first writing system with binary encoding. The system as devised by Braille consists of two parts:
  Character encoding that mapped characters of the French alphabet to tuples of six bits (the dots),
  The physical representation of those six-bit characters with raised dots in a braille cell.
  Within an individual cell, the dot positions are arranged in two columns of three positions. A raised dot can appear in any of the six positions, producing sixty-four (2⁶) possible patterns, including one in which there are no raised dots. For reference purposes, a pattern is commonly described by listing the positions where dots are raised, the positions being universally numbered, from top to bottom, as 1 to 3 on the left and 4 to 6 on the right. For example, dot pattern 1-3-4 describes a cell with three dots raised, at the top and bottom in the left column and at the top of the right column:  that is, the letter ⠍ m. The lines of horizontal Braille text are separated by a space, much like visible printed text, so that the dots of one line can be differentiated from the braille text above and below. Different assignments of braille codes (or code pages) are used to map the character sets of different printed scripts to the six-bit cells. Braille assignments have also been created for mathematical and musical notation. However, because the six-dot braille cell allows only 64 (2⁶) patterns, including space, the characters of a braille script commonly have multiple values, depending on their context. That is, character mapping between print and braille is not one-to-one.  For example, the character ⠙ corresponds in print to both the letter d and the digit 4.
  In addition to simple encoding, many braille alphabets use contractions to reduce the size of braille texts and to increase reading speed. (See Contracted braille)
caption: Silver wedding bands with names Henri(que) and Tita written in braille
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