Free Braille Sign & Label Generator
Free braille sign and label generator with NZ, Australian, US ADA, Marburg and NLS dot geometry, plus matching raised letters. Order it printed in NZ.
What It Does
Braille on a sign is not decoration, it is the message, and getting the dot geometry wrong makes a sign unreadable rather than untidy. This generator lays the wording out cell by cell, places every dot as a domed spherical cap at the size and spacing your chosen standard calls for, and builds the plate around it. It runs live in your browser and nothing is uploaded to design a part. Designing is free; we print the finished plate and courier it anywhere in New Zealand.
Five Standards In One Tool
Dot diameter, dot height, the pitch between dots inside a cell, the pitch between cells and the pitch between lines all differ by jurisdiction, and each is a permitted range rather than a single number. New Zealand follows the BANZAT guidance, Australia the Australian Braille Authority's, the United States the ADA's section 703.3 figures, Marburg Medium covers most of Europe, and the NLS Specification 800 numbers are a paper embossing spec kept here for comparison. Choose one and every dimension moves to its nominal value; change a dimension yourself and the tool says the moment it leaves the standard's range. One warning matters more than the rest: ADA signage must be contracted Grade 2 braille, and this tool writes uncontracted braille, so American signage needs a Grade 2 translation before it complies.
Domed Dots, Never Engraved
A braille dot is read by a fingertip sliding across it, so it has to be a rounded dome standing proud of the plate. Engraved braille reads as nothing at all. Every dot here is a spherical cap: you set the base diameter and the height, and the cap radius that produces them is derived from the two. A height greater than half the diameter is refused rather than quietly built, because that shape undercuts and is no longer a cap.
Print Letters Beside The Braille
Most signage is read by sighted people as well, so the same wording can be raised in ordinary letters above the braille at whatever character height you need, with the gap between the two set on its own. The braille wording can differ from the printed wording where a sign needs a short tactile version of a long printed line.
Te Reo Maori
Te reo needs two things English braille does not: wh as a single cell of dots one, five and six, and a macron written as dots four, five and six ahead of the vowel it lengthens. Turn te reo on and both are applied, so a word like Whare paku comes out as it should rather than as a letter-by-letter transliteration.
The Plate
The plate sizes itself around the wording with a margin you set, or you can fix its width and height and lay the content out inside them. Thickness and corner radius are yours. Keep it thick enough to stay flat: a long thin sign that bows takes the dots out of one plane, and a fingertip finds that immediately. Signs are usually best in a matt filament, since a gloss surface makes the raised letters harder to read at an angle.