Arabic Braille: Alphabet Chart, Harakat and Numbers

Arabic braille is the braille code for Arabic, and its standard today is Unified Arabic Braille, agreed at a conference in Saudi Arabia in 2002. It uses the same six-dot cell as English braille and is read left to right too, but its cells stand for the 28 Arabic letters, the hamza forms and the short-vowel marks (harakat), and it has no capital sign. That left-to-right reading holds even though Arabic print runs right to left. The Arabic word for braille, برايل, is ⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇: the same five cells an English reader would read as b-r-a-i-l.

We wrote this page in English for people learning Arabic, for parents and teachers of a child who reads Arabic braille, and for anyone who has come across Arabic braille and wants to read it. Every cell here comes from the Arabic braille engine behind braillito.com, which is checked against the Unified Arabic chart in World Braille Usage and against liblouis, the open braille library. If you read Arabic, the same chart in Arabic is on our Arabic site. If the six-dot cell is new to you, start with what braille is.

Key points

• Left to right. The first letter of a word is the leftmost cell, and the dots are numbered as in every braille: 1-2-3 down the left column, 4-5-6 down the right.
• One cell per letter. ب b is ⠃ (dots 1-2) and م m is ⠍ (dots 1-3-4). Arabic braille doesn't change a letter's shape at the start, middle or end of a word, as print does.
• Each hamza form is a single cell. أ is ⠌ (dots 3-4), not a hamza cell plus an alef cell.
• لا is one cell, ⠧ (dots 1-2-3-6), so سلام salam takes three cells: ⠎⠧⠍.
• Harakat follow their letter, shadda goes before it. بَ ba is ⠃⠂; بَّ bba is ⠠⠃⠂.
• Numbers use the number sign ⠼ (dots 3-4-5-6) and the cells of a to j, as in English braille.

Arabic braille and English braille at a glance

Read left to right, written right to left

Print Arabic runs right to left, so many people expect Arabic braille to do the same. It doesn't. The Unified Arabic Braille portal of Qatar's Mada Center puts it in one line: "braille in Arabic is read from left to right". Nothing is mirrored either: the cell and its dot numbers are the ones every braille reader learns.

So the cells of a word come in reading order. In سلام salam, the first cell on the left is س, the last on the right is م: ⠎⠧⠍. Only the page around the braille is right to left, in an Arabic book or app.

There is one place where right to left comes back: the slate and stylus. The same Mada page explains that writing with a slate is done from right to left. That comes from the slate, not from Arabic: the stylus presses the dots into the back of the paper, they come up on the other side, and the page is turned over to be read.

The 28 letters

The names and transliterations are the ones World Braille Usage prints on its Unified Arabic chart.

If you know the English braille alphabet, 16 of these will feel familiar: alef, beh, teh, jeem, dal, reh, zain, seen, feh, qaf, kaf, lam, meem, noon, heh and waw use the cell of the English letter with the same sound. Two are close: yeh uses the cell of English i, and khah the cell of x. The other ten, such as ع ʿain ⠷ or ط ṭah ⠾, are cells that English uncontracted braille doesn't use for a letter, so they have to be learned on their own.

Hamza, alef maqsura and teh marbuta

Hamza can stand on its own or sit on a carrier letter. In braille, each form has its own cell.

Notice that أ is not ء plus ا: it is one cell, ⠌, with no dot of the alef cell in it. The same goes for ؤ and ئ. So سؤال suʾal (question) is four cells, one per print letter: ⠎⠳⠁⠇. And إسلام Islam starts with the hamza-below cell: ⠨⠎⠧⠍.

Lam-alef: one cell for لا

When lam is followed by a plain alef, print joins them into the ligature لا, and braille writes that pair as a single cell: ⠧, dots 1-2-3-6. World Braille Usage lists it with the ligatures. That's why سلام has three cells and not four.

Only a plain alef joins. If the alef carries a hamza, as in لأ, it stays two cells, lam and then the hamza form: ⠇⠌.

Harakat: short vowels and the other marks

Print Arabic writes the short vowels and a few other signs as small marks above or below the letter. Braille has no "above" or "below", so each mark becomes a cell on the line. World Braille Usage gives the rule in one line: "Written after the letter, except the Shadda which is before the letter".

Shadda is the one to watch. In print it sits on the letter together with the vowel, but in braille it moves in front of the letter and the vowel stays behind it. بَّ bba is shadda, beh, fatha: ⠠⠃⠂.

When a text writes the harakat, they appear in braille as above; when it leaves them out, the braille is letters only, as in سلام.

Four words, cell by cell

سلام salam (peace)

Four print letters, three cells, and no harakat written.

كَتَبَ kataba (he wrote)

Every letter is followed by its vowel, so the word takes six cells.

مُحَمَّد Muhammad

The doubled m is the whole lesson in one word: the shadda cell comes before the second م, and its fatha after it.

مدرسةٌ madrasatun (a school)

To check your own words, type them into the Arabic braille translator on our Arabic site. It has an Arabic interface, but the box takes any Arabic text, with or without harakat.

Numbers in Arabic braille

Numbers work as in English braille: the number sign ⠼ and then the cells of a to j. The cells are the same whether the print uses Arabic-Indic digits (١٢٣) or Western digits (123).

One number sign covers the whole number, and the digits keep their usual order, left to right: the year 2026 is ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠋.

Punctuation

Arabic punctuation has cells of its own on the same chart. The most common:

The chart gives the question mark and the opening parenthesis the same cell, ⠦: a question mark comes right after a word, an opening parenthesis before one. The closing parenthesis is ⠴.

Where Arabic braille comes from

The unified code comes from the Conference of Developing and Unifying Arabic Braille Characters, which met in Saudi Arabia in October 2002. World Braille Usage (3rd edition, 2013), published by Perkins, the International Council on English Braille and the US National Library Service with UNESCO's permission, prints its chart and notes that several countries confirmed they use it, "and other countries are not". The book lists Arabic as the main language transcribed in 16 countries, from Algeria to Yemen. It labels its Unified Arabic chart with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and prints a second chart for Arabic not using the unified code, labelled Bahrain, Indonesia, Iran and Malaysia.

Mada, the Assistive Technology Center Qatar, runs the Unified Arabic Braille portal, which works on the Arabic braille table for math and science signs, on the first 8-dot Arabic computer braille table, and on the first liblouis library based on the Arabic braille table. Its history page says that Arabic braille was once read right to left, and that a general conference of organizations for the blind in the Arab world chose left to right after braille printing machines, all imported, printed that way. For other scripts, see braille in other languages.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, our app, teaches braille. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. The English lessons are uncontracted braille (grade 1); they don't teach contracted braille or transcription, and Braillito isn't a braille transcriber.

With the app in Arabic, Braillito teaches Arabic braille in 58 lessons across 9 worlds, from the 28 letters to fatha, kasra and damma, sukun and shadda. The translator on braillito.com shows how a word or short phrase looks in UEB, but it only applies the rules a program can apply, so it doesn't replace a transcriber. Without paying, the braille translator works in any browser.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Is Arabic braille read right to left?

No. Arabic braille is read left to right, like braille in every other language, even though Arabic print runs right to left. The cells of a word come in reading order, so the first letter is the leftmost cell. Only writing with a slate and stylus goes right to left, because the dots are pressed into the back of the paper and read on the other side.

Is Arabic braille the same as English braille?

No, but it shares a lot. The cell, the dot numbers, the number sign and the digits are the same, and 16 Arabic letters use the cell of the English letter with the same sound. The differences: Arabic has no capital sign, the harakat take cells of their own, each hamza form and لا have their own cells, and some cells mean different things: ⠊ is ي y in Arabic and i in English.

How do you write the harakat in braille?

Each mark takes its own cell, right after the letter it belongs to: fatha ⠂, kasra ⠑, damma ⠥, sukun ⠒, and the three tanwin marks. Shadda is the exception: it goes before the letter, and any vowel stays after it. كَتَبَ kataba is ⠅⠂⠞⠂⠃⠂.

How do you write marhaban (hello) in Arabic braille?

مرحبا is ⠍⠗⠱⠃⠁: م, ر, ح, ب and ا, one cell each, left to right. Written without harakat, as here, it takes five cells.