PDF to Braille (BRF)

About PDF to Braille (BRF)

This tool extracts the body text of a PDF in reading order, turns each character into a six-dot braille cell and saves a .brf file. Lines wrap at word boundaries at 40 cells by default (adjustable from 10 to 80), and an optional form-feed character between source pages tells an embosser to start a new sheet.

Lines without Korean come out in uncontracted (grade 1) Unified English Braille. Lines with Korean use the letter tables of the Korean Braille Code, spelled out without its contractions. Neither code is contracted, so the output suits short notices and drafts; braille going straight to a reader should still be checked by a transcriber.

What matches standard English braille

Letters a–z use the standard grade 1 cells. A single capital gets the capital indicator (dot 6), and two or more capitals in a row get the capitalized word indicator (dots 6-6), with the capitals terminator (dots 6-3) if lower case follows in the same word. Numbers start with the numeric indicator (dots 3-4-5-6) and use the a–j cells; a letter a–j right after a digit gets the grade 1 indicator (dots 5-6) so it isn’t read as another digit.

Full stop is dots 2-5-6, question mark 2-3-6, colon 2-5, semicolon 2-3, comma 2, exclamation mark 2-3-5, apostrophe 3 and hyphen 3-6, as listed in the UEB rulebook. Other symbols, accented letters and CJK characters other than Korean become blank cells.

Korean text

A line that contains Hangul follows the Korean Braille Code (2024 revision): initial, final and vowel cells, the tense-consonant sign, the vowel separator, the number sign and Roman-letter indicators around English words. The Code’s contractions, which it makes mandatory, are not applied, so the result is readable but longer than a proper Korean transcription.

A BRF file in Unicode

Classic BRF files write each cell as one ASCII character (dot 1 is “A”, for example). This tool writes Unicode braille characters (U+2800–U+28FF) in UTF-8 instead. Most current braille software and refreshable displays read that fine; an older embosser that only accepts ASCII braille will need a conversion step first.

Worked examples

How to use it

1. Open a PDF with a text layer (run OCR on scans first).
2. Set the cells per line and page breaks; the preview shows each source line above its braille.
3. Download the .brf file and open it in your braille software.

Frequently asked questions