Arabic Braille

Arabic Braille (Arabic: بِرَيْل الْعَرَبِيَّة, birayl alʿarabīyah) is the braille alphabet for the ^[1] Other Arabic-based alphabets have braille systems similar to Arabic Braille, such as Urdu and Persian Braille, but differ in some letter and diacritic assignments.^[2]

Unlike the Arabic script, Arabic Braille is read from left to right, following the international convention. Numbers are also left to right, as in printed Arabic.

Arabic Braille includes numerous abbreviations, some marked by dot 4 or dot 5 (the comma), which are not described here. A conference in Saudi Arabia in 2002 set up a unified braille standard for Arabic, but as of 2013 not all countries had signed up; those not adopting the standard include some Arab countries but also non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Although short-vowel letters are not diacritics in Arabic Braille, they are optional and generally omitted, just as in print Arabic.

Print	ا‎	ب‎	ت‎	ث‎	ج‎	ح‎	خ‎	د‎	ذ‎	ر‎
Braille
Braille (Unicode)	⠁	⠃	⠞	⠹	⠚	⠱	⠭	⠙	⠮	⠗

Print	ز‎	س‎	ش‎	ص‎	ض‎	ط‎	ظ‎	ع‎	غ‎	ف‎
Braille
Braille (Unicode)	⠵	⠎	⠩	⠯	⠫	⠾	⠿	⠷	⠣	⠋

Print	ق‎	ك‎	ل‎	م‎	ن‎	ه‎	و‎	ي‎	ى‎	ة‎
Braille
Braille (Unicode)	⠟	⠅	⠇	⠍	⠝	⠓	⠺	⠊	⠕	⠡

Print	ال‎	ﻻ‎	أ‎	إ‎	آ‎	أو‎	ؤ‎	ئ‎	ء‎
Braille
Braille (Unicode)	⠉	⠧	⠌	⠨	⠜	⠪	⠳	⠽	⠄

Print	ــُ‎	ــَ‎	ــِ‎	ــٌ‎	ــً‎	ــٍ‎	ــْ‎	ــّ‎
Braille
Braille (Unicode)	⠥	⠂	⠑	⠢	⠰	⠡	⠒	⠠

Shaddah ⟨ــّ‎⟩ comes before the consonant; sukun ⟨ــْ‎⟩ and the vowels after.

There are some differences in quotation marks, brackets, and underlining between traditional and unified Arabic braille conventions.

Common punctuation

Print	،	؛	:	.	!	؟	-
Braille
Braille (Unicode)	⠐	⠰	⠐⠂	⠲	⠖	⠦	⠤

Legacy punctuation

Print	“...”			(...)			*		abbre- viation	under- lining
Braille	...			...
Braille (Unicode)	⠦ ⠴			⠶ ⠶			⠔⠔		⠈	⠨

Unified Arabic punctuation

Print	“...”	(...)	[...]	{...}	underlining
Braille	...	...	...	...
Braille (Unicode)	⠶ ⠶	⠦ ⠴	⠠⠦ ⠴⠄	⠐⠦ ⠴⠂	⠠⠤

• Moon type is a simplification of the Latin alphabet for embossing. An adaptation for Arabic-reading blind people has been proposed.

• Arabic to Braille Translator