What ⢮ means
The numbers identify positions, not a number to read aloud.
A braille cell is a small grid of possible raised dots. Viewed from the reading side, an eight-dot cell has positions 1, 2, 3, 7 down the left column and 4, 5, 6, 8 down the right. In ⢮, positions 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 are filled; 1, 5 and 7 are empty.
Traditional six-dot braille uses the top three rows. This pattern includes the bottom-right dot, 8, so it belongs to the eight-dot arrangement. To translate it into text, you need the particular braille code—the rules assigning meanings to patterns—and the surrounding text. Unicode specifies the dots themselves.
How did braille begin?
Louis Braille developed it from a system for reading by touch.
Charles Barbier devised night writing so soldiers could read by touch in darkness. In 1821, he presented it at a Paris school for blind students. Louis Braille, a student there, developed a six-dot system by 1824.
Braille also serves music and mathematics, with dedicated notation rules. The eight-dot arrangement represented here is an extension of the six-dot cell, not the original design.
Part of the collection
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
2Does using this symbol make a message accessible?
No. A visible braille pattern on a screen is not itself tactile text. Accessible braille requires meaningful encoding and appropriate output, such as a braille display whose pins rise to form dots.
Can it be part of a picture instead of text?
Yes. Braille patterns can form pictures made from text characters. In such a picture, ⢮ contributes dots to the image rather than necessarily representing a letter.
More like this
8
How to type or find ⢮
- Search it as
- braille dots 23468 · eight-dot braille · braille cell meaning · ⢮
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⢮\28AECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.