Braille character representation in German braille files

• Introduction
• List of the "Eurobraille" characters

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Introduction

In the German-speaking countries almost all braille displays and braille embossers are run with character sets based on Eurobraille. In Eurobraille the 256 8-dot braille characters are assigned to the print characters of three character sets that were prevalent in West Europe in the 1980s.

Eurobraille is very different from the North American ASCII braille character assignment often used for braille files to be sent to embossers. For instance, the digits 1 to 9 are not the North American signs with the dots 2, 3, 5 und 6. Instead, they are formed by adding dot 6 to the letter normally representing the digit. Thus, to form the digit "2" dot 6 is added to b or 2 (dots 1 and 2).

The characters of Eurobraille representing the braille signs with the dots 1 to 6 are listed below.

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Eurobraille representation of the braille characters

Here, the Eurobraille signs are listed which consist only of the dots 1 to 6.

Some systems use a representation with "upper-case" braille signs which have an additional dot 7. For the affected signs theses alternative ASCII characters are listed behind the reglular characters.

The Eurobraille character with the dots 4,5,6 ("lich" in German contracted braille) is the delete character (ASCII 127). For technical reasons this character cannot usually be printed or displayed. Therefore, in braille files for embossing the underscore character (ASCII 95) (which actually has the dots 4,5,6,7) is usually substituted.

The first two columns of the following table gives the meaning of the character in German and in English (contracted) braille.

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© 2008 Vivian Aldridge (letzte Änderung: 2008-09-04)