French Braille Alphabet: Chart, Accents and Numbers

The French braille alphabet uses the same cells as English braille for the 26 letters a to z, and adds 14 cells for the letters French writes with an accent, from ç to œ. Numbers are where the two part ways: French braille normally writes digits in the Antoine notation, with dot 6 in front, while English braille uses the number sign and the letters a to j. The word français (French) is ⠋⠗⠁⠝⠯⠁⠊⠎.

We wrote this page in English for people learning French, for parents and teachers of a child who reads French braille, and for anyone who has come across French braille and wants to read it. Every cell here comes from the French braille engine behind braillito.com, which follows the Code Braille Français Uniformisé (CBFU) and is tested against liblouis, the open-source braille translator. If you read French, the same chart in French is on our French site. If the six-dot cell is new to you, start with what braille is.

Key points

• The 26 letters are the ones you know. a is ⠁ (dot 1) in French and in English, and so on to z.
• French adds 14 letters with their own cells: ç, é, à, è, ù, â, ê, î, ô, û, ë, ï, ü and œ. é is ⠿, all six dots.
• A capital takes dots 4-6, ⠨, right before the word. English braille uses dot 6.
• Numbers have two systems. The standard Antoine notation puts dot 6, ⠠, before the number: 1 is ⠠⠡. The Louis Braille notation uses the number sign ⠼ and the letters a to j, as English does: 1 is ⠼⠁.
• The rulebook is the CBFU, whose second edition is dated 2008 and is shared by the French-speaking countries.

French braille and English braille at a glance

The 26 letters: the same as English braille

Louis Braille was French, and he designed his alphabet for French (his story). So the 26 letters have the same cells in French and English braille. If you can read the English braille alphabet, you can already read most of a French word.

The letters come in rows. a to j use only the top two rows of the cell. k to t are the same ten shapes with dot 3 added. u, v, x, y and z add dots 3 and 6. One detail: in the CBFU's own table, w is listed after the accented letters, not between v and x. Its cell, ⠺ (dots 2-4-5-6), is the same as in English.

The 14 accented letters

This is the part an English reader has to learn. The CBFU gives every French letter with an accent its own cell, and the same goes for ç and the œ ligature. They are not built from a base letter plus a mark: é is one cell, not e with something added.

Two patterns make the table easier to learn:

• ç, é, à, è and ù finish the row that u starts. Each one is a letter from p to t with dot 6 added. p is ⠏ and ç is ⠯; t is ⠞ and ù is ⠾.
• â, ê, î, ô, û, ë, ï, ü and œ are a to i with dot 6 added. a is ⠁ and â is ⠡; i is ⠊ and œ is ⠪. Keep this row in mind: the Antoine digits use the same nine cells.

A capital accented letter takes the capital sign like any other letter: É is ⠨⠿, and the name Élise is ⠨⠿⠇⠊⠎⠑.

If you also read contracted English braille, watch out. The cells of ç, é, à, è and ù are the English contractions for and, for, of, the and with (braille contractions). In uncontracted French braille they are always letters.

Capital letters

French braille marks a capital with dots 4-6, ⠨, placed right before the word. Paris is ⠨⠏⠁⠗⠊⠎.

For a word written all in capitals, the CBFU has two levels. Its base code, meant for most everyday texts, uses a single 4-6 before a word whose first letter or whose letters are all capitals. Its complementary rules add an indicator for a word written entirely in capitals: 4-6 twice. The braillito.com engine uses the second form, as liblouis does. ONU, the French name of the UN, is ⠨⠨⠕⠝⠥. The capital sign also carries across an apostrophe: L'ONU is ⠨⠨⠇⠄⠕⠝⠥, with the apostrophe on dot 3, ⠄.

That's a real difference from English braille, where the capital sign is dot 6. In French, dot 6 alone has another job: it opens a number.

Numbers: the Antoine and Louis Braille notations

French braille has two ways to write digits. This is the part of the code that changes most from English braille.

The Antoine notation, the standard

The CBFU makes the Antoine notation the rule for French texts. A number opens with dot 6, ⠠, which the code calls the modificateur mathématique. The digits 1 to 9 are the cells of a to i with dot 6 added, which are also the cells of â to œ. Zero is dots 3-4-5-6, ⠼. According to the CBFU, this notation was borrowed from French mathematical braille, the Notation braille mathématique, first published in France in 1971 and revised in 2007.

The Louis Braille notation

The older system is the one English braille still uses: the number sign ⠼ (dots 3-4-5-6), then the letters a to j. The CBFU calls it the notation Louis Braille, after the way Louis Braille first defined the digits. In French texts it keeps two uses: music, and some displays or documents meant for readers of several languages. The CBFU says Antoine is the only notation for digits, "à l'exception de la musique et des contextes plurilingues": except in music and multilingual settings.

Both notations side by side

In both systems, one prefix covers the whole number. 2026 is ⠠⠣⠼⠣⠫ in Antoine and ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠋ in the Louis Braille notation. A decimal comma stays inside the number, so 4,50 (French for 4.50) is ⠠⠹⠂⠱⠼ in Antoine, with the comma on dot 2.

Watch the cell ⠼, dots 3-4-5-6. In Antoine it's the digit 0. In English braille and in the Louis Braille notation, the same cell is the number sign. So 10 is ⠠⠡⠼ in Antoine and ⠼⠁⠚ in the Louis Braille notation. If a French text seems to have a number sign at the end of a number, it's a zero.

The same goes for the shared cells. Without dot 6 in front, ⠣ is the letter ê, as in être (to be), ⠣⠞⠗⠑. After dot 6 it's the digit 2. The prefix is what tells the reader which one it is. The same number chart in French, with more examples in Antoine, is on our French site.

Four words, cell by cell

français (French)

⠋⠗⠁⠝⠯⠁⠊⠎

• f, r, a and n: the same cells as in English.
• ç: ⠯ (dots 1-2-3-4-6), one cell.
• a, i and s.

French doesn't capitalize the names of languages, so there's no capital sign.

élève (student)

⠿⠇⠮⠧⠑

• é: ⠿, all six dots.
• l: ⠇.
• è: ⠮ (dots 2-3-4-6).
• v and e: ⠧⠑.

é and è look alike in print, but in braille they are two separate letters with different cells.

Noël (Christmas)

⠨⠝⠕⠫⠇

• The capital sign ⠨, then n ⠝ and o ⠕.
• ë: ⠫ (dots 1-2-4-6).
• l: ⠇.

There's no dot 6 in front of the word, so ⠫ here is a letter. After the Antoine prefix, the same cell would be the digit 6.

à bientôt (see you soon)

⠷ ⠃⠊⠑⠝⠞⠹⠞

• à: ⠷ (dots 1-2-3-5-6), then a space.
• b, i, e, n and t: ⠃⠊⠑⠝⠞.
• ô: ⠹ (dots 1-4-5-6), then t.

Where French braille comes from

Before the CBFU, French braille was not quite the same everywhere. In some countries, for example, the period and the apostrophe shared one symbol. On June 7, 2001, representatives of French-speaking Africa, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Quebec signed a cooperation agreement in Casablanca to unify French braille. It set three steps: unify the braille symbols, build a computer braille table for eight-dot and six-dot braille, and consider a reform of the Abrégé Orthographique Étendu of 1955, the French contracted braille. The new code gives each braille symbol one value: the period is dots 2-5-6, ⠲, and the apostrophe is dot 3, ⠄, in literary, computer and math texts alike.

In 2006, after four years of work, the first edition of the code came out in France, and the second edition is dated September 2008. It comes in two versions with the same tables and rules: an international one from the Commission Évolution du Braille Français (CEBF), which represents French-speaking Africa, Belgium, France and Switzerland, and one for Quebec. In France, a ministerial order of August 17, 2006 applies the code to all braille produced in the country. The Valentin Haüy Association, which distributes the code, notes that the third step, a reform of the contracted braille, was still a project, and that meanwhile the 2008 code and the 1955 abrégé apply in all French-speaking countries. 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 French, Braillito teaches French braille in 65 lessons across 9 worlds, from the vowels and the accented letters to capitals and numbers. Its number lessons teach the Louis Braille notation, the number sign and a to j, while its arithmetic games write numbers in Antoine. 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. Our French translator writes numbers in either notation.

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 French braille the same as English braille?

Partly. The 26 letters a to z have the same cells. French adds 14 cells for its accented letters, marks capitals with dots 4-6 instead of dot 6, and normally writes numbers in the Antoine notation. Contracted braille is a separate system in each language.

How do you write accents in French braille?

Each accented letter is a single cell of its own, not a base letter plus an accent mark. é is ⠿ (all six dots), è is ⠮ and ç is ⠯. The full list of 14 is in the table above.

Which way of writing numbers should I learn?

For reading French texts, learn the Antoine notation: the CBFU makes it the standard, with dot 6 in front and the cells of â to œ for 1 to 9. The Louis Braille notation, the number sign and a to j, is used for music and some multilingual material. If you read English braille, you already know it.

How do you write bonjour in French braille?

bonjour is ⠃⠕⠝⠚⠕⠥⠗. It has no accents, so every cell is the same as in English braille: b, o, n, j, o, u, r. Written with a capital, Bonjour adds dots 4-6, ⠨, in front.