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The BRL of Texas logo is a five-pointed star divided into red, white and blue sections. The left side of the star is dark blue with a white star within it. The right side is divided horizontally: the top half is white, and the bottom half is red. Across the white section of the star are the letters "BRLT" in all caps. Below these letters are corresponding Braille dots that represent the same four letters.

Braille Revival League of Texas

An affiliate of the Braille Revival League and the American Council of the Blind of Texas

Seeing Braille

What is Seeing Braille?

Seeing Braille is a shareware program that enables blind or sighted presenters to demonstrate braille to sighted audiences—either in person or online.

The program works on a PC running Windows 10 or 11 and is compatible with current versions of NVDA and JAWS screen reading software.

How Seeing Braille Works

Using Dot Mode, Seeing Braille will display a single braille cell on the screen so that the presenter can move the highlighted circle from dot to dot to illustrate how the dots in the braille cell are numbered by pressing 1–6 on the row of numbers above the letters.

By changing to Character Mode, the presenter can display any dot pattern for single characters by pressing letters, numbers, and punctuation on the QWERTY keyboard. By capitalizing a letter, two cells will appear showing both the capital sign and the letter. The number sign will also appear when a number is typed. Use single digits or letters only in this mode.

In Word Mode, words in uncontracted or contracted braille will be displayed on the screen by typing a word or a short phrase and pressing enter on the keyboard to further demonstrate how braille works.

Print characters can be turned on (visible) to help the sighted audience relate to what they are seeing or off (invisible) so they can practice recognizing characters or words without print once they have developed some braille by sight skills.

Use the hot keys menu to change from mode to mode, and configuration to change background or dot colors and select uncontracted or contracted braille for Word Mode.

How Can You Get Seeing Braille?

To receive a download link for the executable installation file for Seeing Braille, please enter your email below. You are also welcome to ask questions on our Contact Form if you are unsure whether Seeing Braille is right for you.

We'll email you a download link and won't share your address.

Help Us Spread the Word!

While the Seeing Braille download is free, we encourage you to donate to BRL of Texas to support updates to Seeing Braille as well as our work promoting braille across Texas.

Support Our Work

Why Does Seeing Braille Matter?

By exploring dot positions, letter patterns, numbers, punctuation, and uncontracted or contracted words and phrases, Seeing Braille helps demystify braille for people who are curious about braille, parents of children who are blind or have low vision as well as their classmates and their mainstream teachers. The general public at blindness awareness events will be amazed how Seeing Braille depicts braille in an easy to understand visual way.

Who Can Use Seeing Braille?

Blind and sighted presenters alike can use Seeing Braille independently on a virtual platform where the screen can be shared, in a classroom by connecting their PC to a projector so the audience can view it on a large screen or one on one by turning the PC or laptop screen toward the learner and using menu options, keyboard shortcuts with or without JAWS to know what mode they are in and an external QWERTY keyboard to illustrate the numbers for each dot in the braille cell, dot patterns for characters, and words or short phrases.

25th Silver Anniversary, established October 2001
BRL of Texas is celebrating 25 years.