Braille Pattern Dots-14

English Braille assigns ⠉ to the letter c. A Braille cell has six possible positions in two columns; this pattern uses dots 1 and 4, the two positions across the top. In longer text, read it through the code used for that text.

In 1821, Charles Barbier presented a 12-dot code for silent communication at night at a Paris school for blind students. Louis Braille had adapted the idea into a six-dot system by 1824, described it in his first book in 1829, and refined it by 1837. Barbier's code was the predecessor; Braille's system was aimed at literacy and later extended to punctuation, mathematics, and music.

Why can ⠉ mean different things in different languages?

The cell keeps its dots; the reading follows the code. A Braille code can assign the same pattern a letter, sound, contraction, or sign. ⠉ is c in English Braille; identify the code for another text before interpreting the cell.

The pattern is encoded as a Braille cell, not translated into a letter by Unicode. On screen, a font draws its dot pattern; on embossed Braille, the corresponding raised dots are read by touch.