Braille pattern dots-23458

⢞ is an eight-dot Braille pattern with five raised dots: 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8. Braille is a system of reading by touch; this character records a dot arrangement, not one universal letter or word. In a picture made from text, its dots can simply form part of the image.

Text symbol

What ⢞ means

⢞ has two dots on the left and three on the right. An eight-dot Braille cell has two columns of four positions. From top to bottom, the left positions are numbered 1, 2, 3, 7; the right positions are 4, 5, 6, 8. Here, the middle two left positions and the top two and bottom right positions are raised.

A Braille code—the reading rules used for a particular language or purpose—assigns meaning to that arrangement. Unicode preserves the dots without assigning a universal reading. Dot 8 places this pattern beyond the original six-dot cell.

Part of the collection

⠃

Braille Symbols

Worth knowing

Charles Barbier’s twelve-dot “night writing” reached a Paris school for blind students in 1821. Louis Braille adapted it into a six-dot system, which he published in 1829.

Questions people ask

Does displaying ⢞ make text readable by touch?

No. A screen glyph is a visual representation. Tactile reading requires physical raised dots, such as those produced by a Braille display or embosser; increasing the font size does not set tactile dot spacing.