Braille has been around since the 1820s, although very few people ever come into contact with it, other than for example, on the control panel of a lift, or on a medicine packet. And because it's just a series of slightly raised dots on a surface - many probably don't even notice it's there. They certainly wouldn't think to try and learn how to read it.

There is a misconception that Braille is read by all blind people, but that's just not the case. According to RNIB; Of the 2 million plus people who are registered as having a serious visual impairment (blindness or close to it) less than 2% can actually read Braille.
But that doesn't diminish it as being a very important method of communication with those people.

The Braille font is fixed in size at 22pt and unlike the fonts that we've all become used to through using a computer, which adjust automatically so that the letter 'i' takes up far less space than the letter 'm' - the same isn't so for Braille, where every letter or number (cell) occupies the same sized space regardless of what it is. Each cell has 6 places where a dot or combination of dots can appear (arranged as two vertical rows of 3 dots). In addition, the tracking (that's the space between each letter/word) and the leading (the space between the lines) is also fixed.

It  may come as quite a surprise to learn that a single A4 page of 12pt text becomes around three and a half pages of Braille - more if there is a lot of short paragraphs.

English Braille is usually all laid out justified to the left,  with no indentations and certainly no centered headings and has no Capitals. There are two levels, Grade 1 - which is best described as beginners Braille, where each ASCii character is represented by single Braille cell. And Grade 2 - also referred to as contracted Braille - which is, in essence, a form of Braille shorthand, where some common words are represented by a single letter (cell) and some longer words are truncated or even conjoined.

If you think of how a text message (SMS) is often written you'll get the general idea.

                  ...as easy as