[breyl] 
noun, verb, Brailled, Braill⋅ing.| 1. | Louis [loo-is, loo-ee; Fr. lwee] , 1809–52, French teacher of the blind. |
| 2. | a system of writing or printing, devised by L. Braille for use by the blind, in which combinations of tangible dots or points are used to represent letters, characters, etc., that are read by touch. |
| 3. | to write or transliterate in Braille characters. |
Braille or braille (brāl)  (click for larger image in new window) n. A system of writing and printing for blind or visually impaired people, in which varied arrangements of raised dots representing letters and numerals are identified by touch. tr.v. Brailled or brailled, Braill·ing or braill·ing, Brailles or brailles To print or transliterate using this system. [After Louis Braille.] |
| Braille, Louis 1809-1852. French musician, educator, and inventor of a writing and printing system for blind or visually impaired people (1829). He lost his sight at the age of three. |
A system of writing and printing for the blind in which arrangements of raised dots representing letters and numbers can be identified by touch.
braille human language
/breyl/ (Often capitalised) A class of writing systems, intended for use by blind and low-vision users, which express glyphs as raised dots. Currently employed braille standards use eight dots per cell, where a cell is a glyph-space two dots across by four dots high; most glyphs use only the top six dots.
Braille was developed by Louis Braille (pronounced /looy bray/) in France in the 1820s. Braille systems for most languages can be fairly trivially converted to and from the usual script.
Braille has several totally coincidental parallels with digital computing: it is binary, it is based on groups of eight bits/dots and its development began in the 1820s, at the same time Charles Babbage proposed the Difference Engine.
Computers output Braille on braille displays and braille printers for hard copy.
British Royal National Institute for the Blind.
(1998-10-19)