What ⡽ means
Three dots are raised in each column. A Braille cell is a small arrangement of raised dots read by touch. Viewed from the reading side, an eight-dot cell has positions 1, 2, 3, 7 down the left and 4, 5, 6, 8 down the right.
In ⡽, the left column has its top and bottom two dots raised; the right has its top three raised. Positions 2 and 8 are empty. “Eight-dot” describes the available positions, not how many dots must be raised. Positions 7 and 8 sit beneath the traditional six-dot cell.
How do you read ⡽?
Its reading requires the relevant Braille code. Braille is a way of writing by touch, used by blind readers across many languages. Different codes assign dot patterns to letters, numbers and other signs. Unicode preserves this exact pattern without assigning it a single meaning across those codes.
To interpret ⡽ in Braille text, identify the language and code and keep the surrounding cells. In a picture made from rows of Braille characters, it can instead supply dots that form part of the image.
Part of the collection
Worth knowing
- Louis Braille developed his six-dot system after encountering Charles Barbier’s twelve-dot writing. Barbier’s system reached his Paris school in 1821; Braille developed his version by 1824 and published it in 1829.
Questions people ask
1Can you feel this character on an ordinary screen?
No. A font draws visible dots, not raised ones. A refreshable Braille display or Braille embosser produces tactile dots. Unicode specifies the pattern, not the physical size or spacing of those dots.
More like this
8
How to type or find ⡽
- Search it as
- Braille 134567 · Braille dots · eight-dot Braille · Braille pattern 134567
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⡽\287DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.