Type braille directly on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch supports braille entry directly on the device's screen, without the need for a physical braille keyboard.

How to enter braille on your iOS or iPadOS device's screen

You can enter braille with your iOS or iPadOS device lying flat in front of you (tabletop mode), or with the device facing away so that your fingers curl back to tap the screen (screen-away mode).

First, make sure that VoiceOver is turned on, then set the VoiceOver rotor to Braille Screen Input. If Braille Screen Input isn't in the rotor, go to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Rotor, then turn on Braille Screen Input.

Now you can enter braille characters by tapping the screen with one finger or several fingers at the same time. You can also perform these actions:

  • Enter a space: Swipe right with one finger.

  • Delete the previous character: Swipe left with one finger.

  • Move to a new line: Swipe right with two fingers.

  • Cycle through spelling suggestions: Swipe up or down with one finger.

  • Enter a carriage return, or send a message: Swipe up with three fingers.

  • Switch between six-dot braille and contracted braille: Swipe right with three fingers.

  • Translate immediately (when contractions are enabled): Swipe down with two fingers.

  • Switch to the next keyboard: Swipe up with two fingers.

To exit Braille Screen Input, do a two-finger scrub or adjust the rotor to another setting.

To have your iPad read dots aloud, tap and hold the dots, then release the dots when you hear the timer tones and announcement.

Adjust entry dot positions

On iPhone, tap and release all three dot positions on the right, then tap and release three dot positions on the left hand. On iPad, double-tap all dot positions at same time. VoiceOver announces that the dots' positions have been recalibrated.

Change Braille Screen Input settings

Go to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Braille > Braille Screen Input to make six-dot or contracted braille the default or to reverse the dot positions for six-dot and eight-dot braille.

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