Braille is a system of raised dots in cells that represent letters, numbers, and symbols. There are three grades of braille: grade 1, which is a one-to-one conversion and cannot abbreviate words; grade 2, which can represent abbreviated forms of words and is the most popular; and grade 3, which is a shorthand system used for personal convenience.
Braille is a system of raised dots arranged in cells. Any combination of one to six dots can be raised within each cell and the number and position of raised dots within a cell conveys to the reader the letter, word, number or symbol that the cell represents . There are 64 possible combinations of raised dots within a single cell. Due to the different needs of braille readers, there are three different grades of braille.
In the first of the grades of braille, grade 1, each possible arrangement of dots within a cell represents only one letter, number, punctuation mark, or special braille composing mark—it’s a one-to-one conversion. Individual cells cannot represent words or abbreviations in this degree of braille. Because of this grade’s inability to abbreviate words, books and other documents produced in grade 1 braille are bulkier and larger than normally printed text. Grade 1 braille is typically only used by those unfamiliar with the degrees of braille, but starting in the early 2000s there was a new movement among elementary school braille teachers to introduce vision-impaired children to the grade 2 braille right after teaching the basics of grade 1 braille.
Grade 2 braille was introduced as a space-saving alternative to grade 1 braille. In grade 2 braille, a cell can represent an abbreviated form of a word. Many combinations of cells have been created to represent common words, making this the most popular of the braille grades. There are partial word contractions, which often replace common suffixes or prefixes, and whole word contractions, where a single cell represents an entire commonly used word. Words can be abbreviated by using a single letter to represent the whole word, by using a special symbol to precede the first or last letter of the word while truncating the rest of the word, by using a double letter contraction such as “bb” or “ cc”, i.e. remove most or all of the vowels in a word to shorten it. A complex system of styles, rules and usage has been developed for this type of braille.
The last of the braille grades, grade 3, is essentially a braille shorthand system. Because it has not been standardized, it is not used in publications. Instead, it is generally used by individuals for their own personal convenience. Contains over 300 word contractions and makes great use of vowel omission. Also, word and paragraph spacing is reduced to shorten the length of the final document. Sometimes it also substitutes combinations of punctuation symbols for words.
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