About Braillify
What Braillify does
Most braille software is built for professional transcribers: it is installed on one computer, licensed per seat, and assumes you already know braille. Braillify is for everyone else — a parent writing a note, a teacher checking a worksheet, a designer drafting a sign, a developer adding braille to an app. Everything runs from a web page, with no account and no download.
- Braille translator — text to braille and braille to text, Grade 1 and Grade 2.
- Braille alphabet chart — letters, punctuation, symbols and indicators with dot numbers, as a printable PDF.
- Braille numbers — digits, numbers 1 to 100 and the rules for decimals, times and dates.
- Documents to BRF — PDF and Word files converted into embosser-ready Braille Ready Format.
- Image reader — detects braille dots in a photo (experimental).
- Braille API — the same tools as a free REST API.
How the translation works
Braillify does not use home-made rules. Translation is done by liblouis, the open-source braille translation library maintained by an international community and used by the NVDA screen reader and by BRLTTY. Braillify runs liblouis 3.28 with its Unified English Braille (UEB) Grade 1 and Grade 2 tables, in both directions. Documents are read with the open-source pdf-parse and mammoth libraries, passed through the same engine, and paginated to 40 cells by 25 lines, the usual page size for braille embossers. The braille on the alphabet and numbers pages is generated by the same engine, so the reference pages and the translator always agree.
What it cannot do yet
- Only English braille is supported.
- Maths in Nemeth Code, the older American code (EBAE) and text styling such as bold and italics are not produced.
- The image reader uses a simple dot-detection method, not a trained model, and needs a clear, straight, well-lit photo.
- PDF conversion reads the text layer, so a scanned PDF with no text in it produces nothing.
- Converted documents are plain paragraphs, without braille headings, page numbers or tables.
Automatic braille is a fast first draft. For exam papers, medical or legal information and permanent signage, have the result checked by a qualified braille transcriber.
Your data
Text and files are processed in memory to produce the result and are not stored. There are no accounts, no tracking cookies and no third-party analytics. The details are in the privacy policy, and the rules for using the tools and the API are in the terms of use.
Pricing
All tools are free during early access. Paid plans with higher limits and API keys are planned — see pricing.