The following design study seeks to integrate two writing systems into a single typeface—specifically, I aim to merge Braille and conventional blackletter script into a unified typographic system. Until now, these two writing systems have coexisted independently, such as in public wayfinding systems or on pharmaceutical packaging. From my perspective, inclusion may not simply mean developing separate solutions but rather finding a single approach that addresses multiple challenges and tasks, fostering true participation. This raises the question: Is it possible to create a font that harmoniously unites both writing systems within a coherent typeface?

Photo taken at Regensburg central station: The wayfinding system features braille and palpable text next to each other. Can these both type systems be merged in a meaningful way?

With the Braillant project, I intend to explore this question in an experimental and prototypical manner. However, the goal of this design study is not to eliminate the established (and functional) coexistence of Braille and text but rather to investigate, on an experimental level, whether such an integration is even feasible—and, more importantly, whether it is meaningful.

Crude sketch of what I was attempting to do…

How Many People Actually Read Braille?

According to Statista, more than 70,000 people in Germany are blind, while another 45,000 have a severe visual impairment. In total, over 328,000 people in Germany are classified as severely disabled due to a visual impairment (source).

However, determining how many of these individuals actually use Braille—or can read it fluently—isn’t straightforward. This issue has already been recognized in research. For example, Sheffield et al. (2022) conducted a literature review to estimate the number of Braille readers in the U.S. and arrived at a sobering conclusion:

There is no current source of data that succinctly measures braille literacy rates in the United States, and there are no data that explain whether braille literacy rates are rising or declining.

Source: Sheffield et al. (2022)

Prior Work

To my knowledge, there are two notable projects that have explored a to merge the braille font system with a blackletter type:

Among these, the Braille Neue project has received sporadic coverage in both Japanese and American design and accessibility circles. While I find the concept intriguing, there are several challenges associated with its implementation.

Opinion: Issues with Braille Neue

Requires two colors: Since Braille dots are integrated into the letter shapes, they disappear when printed in a single color.
Limited character set: The available characters barely approximate real Braille content. Standard Braille includes uppercase and lowercase letters as well as punctuation.
Lowercase-first principle: In Braille, all letters are lowercase by default. Uppercase letters only emerge from contextual markers. Braille Neue on the other hand features only uppercase characters.
Readability concerns: Certain characters, particularly I and V, suffer from reduced legibility.
Lack of contractions and ligatures: The project does not account for Braille’s many shorthand notations and ligatures, which are widely used in real-world applications. Letter combinations such as ›SCH‹ are not written by placing three braille letters next to each other, such as ⠎ ⠉ ⠓ but by using a single defined braille glyph that looks like this: ⠱
No German character set: The font does not support extended German Braille characters.
Typography considerations: Since Braille is, by definition, a system of raised dots, the blackletter typeface should avoid rounded features that might visually blend with the Braille elements.
Missing Braille number prefix: In standard Braille, numbers are represented by placing a numeric indicator (U+283C) before the letters A–J, which act as an index that these letters are to be read as digits. This means the Braille symbols for “1” and “A” are identical, and a reader only differentiates them using the numeric indicator. According to the German Blind Institute (Deutsche Blindenstudienanstalt), all Braille symbols following U+283C are interpreted as numbers until a space appears.

Work in Progress: My attempt—the Braillant font

Constraints & Design Considerations

For this project, I have adhered to the following constraints and design principles:

Braille has two primary writing systems: Broadly speaking, Braille comes in two formats: 6-dot Braille and 8-dot Braille. This project focuses exclusively on the 6-dot Braille system and does not support 8-dot Braille.

Determining the needed spacing of the braille font—the matching blackletter glyphs are displayed on the top. It becomes obvious that braille demands a very strict spacing routine that must not be altered in any way. (From the perspective of typography this is quite an interesting (aka: drastic) design constraint!)

Fixed spacing is a fundamental rule of Braille: In standard Braille typography, the spacing between Braille characters is static and cannot be adjusted. This presents a key limitation from a design perspective—kerning and letter-spacing adjustments are not possible. As a result, the font must be monospaced, with strictly uniform character widths, letter spacing, and whitespace. This fixed spacing is critical for readability and must be maintained to ensure proper Braille legibility. This creates design challenges, particularly for wide characters like M or W, as well as for ligatures (e.g., SCH, which takes up significant space).

Demonstration of the compromises that were necessary to fit large width letters within the tight constraints of the grid that the braille dots (and their spacing) determine.

Generative and Parametric Design Approach

The font is designed to be as generative as possible, meaning that the size and shape of the Braille dots can be adjusted flexibly within the design. This parametric approach is not limited to the Braille dots themselves—it also applies to other typographic elements such as serifs and diacritics.

Screenshot taken in Glyphs 3: Each letters features some static and procedural components, i.e. the serifs are built either by dynamic components (when docking to a braille dot—see ②) or by using the dynamic serif features in Glyphs ①. The braille dots are also built by procedural component and can be adjusted in shape and size at any time ③. Last but not least: By keeping the braille dots as a procedural component it is possible to adjust the visual gap between dot and blackletter stem on the fly ④.

Quick demo how the shape of all braille dots are tweaked by generative components

Adjustable tactile separation: The design includes an option to maintain a visual gap between the Braille dots and the stems of the standard (blackprint) letters. This gap can also be physically felt, potentially enhancing tactile readability for Braille users.

A possible use case for Braillant: The differences between the round shapes of the Braille dots and the hard edges of the blackletter type might form a tactile contrast that can be felt.

Scope

Preamble: I want to emphasize once again that this project should be understood as a design study, not as a commercially or professionally usable font.

Unlike the Japanese project Braille Neue, this development is explicitly intended as an open-source project. This means that not only is the font released under a highly permissive license, but the entire source code—including hinting, OpenType features, and the original development files—will be openly available and fully editable. Have a look at the GitHub repository.

Adapting the print typeface to Braille: The print lettering is designed to align as closely as possible with the grid used in Braille. Whenever feasible, the Braille dots for each character are integrated into the geometry or “stems” of the conventional print letters.

Streamlined abbreviations through automated ligatures: Common multi-letter combinations (such as “SCH” – ⠎ ⠉ ⠓ ) are handled via automatic open type ligatures, which eliminates the need to separately insert Braille characters for each letter, as the shortened form is generated automatically.

Automatic character substitution in order to implement the common Braille shorthands, such as ‘SCH‘, ‘CH’, ‘EI’, ‘IE’, etc.

Testing the Open Type features: automatic transforming common shorthand letters such as ›st‹ or ›sch‹ into single letters that adhere to the grid system while keeping the same blackletter stem width.

Some of the many ligatures for the braille shorthand letters and for converting letters to numbers by a trailing U+283C character. Since there are in total two different uppercase versions (default and smallcaps) it is necessary to include custom ligatures for both systems.

Addressing uppercase and lowercase limitations: According to German braille standards (page 34), uppercase is generally omitted. Nonetheless, proper attention to both uppercase and lowercase remains necessary. That’s why I decided to ‘break the grid’—i.e. extending the letters at the top.

Combination of uppercase and lowercase letters

Small caps as an alternative for adjusting to strictly gridded designs: For any design context that requires strictly gridded uppercase letters only, the font includes versions of uppercase letters rendered as small caps to maintain visual consistency within the grid.

Comparison of the small caps (top row) and uppercase (bottom row) version of the font. While the small cap version sticks closer to the grid system determined by the Braille dots (and also looks quite more pleasant) it is not possible to develop suitable lowercase letters to this design language.

Initial focus on wayfinding systems: Priority is given to symbols like arrows over less commonly used glyphs such as the percent or per mille signs, reflecting the font’s intended utility in signage and navigation.

Constructing wayfinding systems by combining three braille symbols. In this situation the font will also create a ligature to display an arrow in the blackletter font.

Comprehensive Unicode Braille support: In addition to typical alphabetic glyphs, the font also includes the complete Unicode Braille character set. This is important because Braille symbols do not align one-to-one with their alphabetic counterparts in Unicode (for instance, Unicode U+0041, “A,” is not the same as Braille’s “A,” U+2801).

Glyph overview of version 0.3 of the Braillant font with lowercase letters, two different uppercase letters, two different number versions, punctuation, ligatures and smart glyphs.

The regular typeface of Braillant (version 0.3)

Limitations & design choices

Sticking strictly to raster provided by the braille dots can function quite well with a lot of letters. Unfortunately there are some glyph shapes that cannot incorporate the braille dots in their stems. At least not in a meaningful way. For these isolated cases I decided to draw the blackletter shapes in a similar design like the rest of the font and keep the braille dots outside of the blackletter type.

Example of three versions of the capital I. Only the one that keeps the braille dots outside of the blackletter type stems produces a meaningful (i.e. readable) result. Any attempts to include the braille dots within the blackletter (e.g. by over pronounced serifs) did not yield any reasonable results.

Serif or sans-serif?

I did some experiments by designing a very geometric monospace type without any serifs. Although the result looked promising the design was too close to the existing projects, such as Braille Neue—at least in my opinion. Experimenting with serifs and other font features led to more interesting results.

Sketch of the alpha version of Braillant: No serifs, mostly orthogonal construction.

Two story or single story g

During design the lowercase g was redesigned several times. The biggest decision was made if the font should feature a single story or two story g. In the current version a double story g is used since it does not need as much vertical space to remain readable. Also, the quirkiness adds to the charm of the type—at least I hope.

Comparison between a single story and two story lowercase g.

Visual gaps between letters

Sticking to the grid that the Braille dots provided led to some quirky (or rather unappealing) visual effects. One of the most obvious are some visual gaps between certain letters. Especially the lowercase ‘l’ proved to be rather difficult to implement. When the Braille dots are included in the blackletter stems the letter will form an ugly whitespace on the right. Since the distances between each Braille dot and between each Braille letter needs to be static and fixed there is no possibility to equalize the visual appeal by spacing or kerning.