GS8 Braille Code

Gardner–Salinas 8-dot braille (GS8) is an 8-dot variant of braille, primarily used in computing and scientific contexts.

Unlike traditional 6-dot braille, historically designed for tactile reading, GS8 expands the braille cell to 8 dots arranged in two columns of 4 dots, allowing for up to 256 distinct combinations.

This expansion facilitates the direct representation of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, mathematical symbols, and special characters without the need for contextual prefixes.

The general principle is the same as that of standard braille: each character corresponds to a specific configuration of raised dots.

GS8's innovation lies in the use of two additional dots (points 7 and 8), allowing for the direct encoding of capital letters, mathematical symbols, or computer symbols without prior indicators.

Identify the lines of braille, and separate each character so that it has 2 columns of 4 dots (at most, it can be less).

Replace each Braille character with the corresponding character in the GS8 Braille alphabet.

The text is composed of vertical rectangular cells of 2 columns by 4 rows of dots, unlike classic braille which is limited to 2x3.

All references to visual impairment (visually impaired, blind person, etc.) are clues.

GS8 is supported by Unicode in the U+2800 to U+28FF block.

The GS8 braille display uses a numbering system backward compatible with braille.

Points 1 to 3 are located in the upper left corner, points 4 to 6 in the upper right corner, point 7 in the lower left corner, and point 8 in the lower right corner.