People see my braille books and ask me "How can you read that?" Braille is not just a bunch of dots. The dots are embossed or raised on the paper so that they can be read by touching with the fingertips. Each character is a cell. A cell is made up of a maximum of six dots which are arranged in two verticle rows of three. Different combinations of these make the different characters. To make things easier, there are contractions. Contractions are characters which are short for a word, or a sound e.g "er" and "the". There are many rules about which contractions you can use and where. Blind and vision impaired people who use braille all the time can read it fluently, just like a full sighted person reads print. It takes a lot of practice though, and there�s a lot to remember.
The braille alphabet
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