Is French Braille like the UK one?

AN EXPERT from the association Donne-Moi tes Yeux said Braille intégral (standard Braille) was the same in both – it involves a pattern of one to six dots for each letter and is international.

The exception is special characters for French accented letters. This is used, for example, for literature.

Another system allowing for faster reading – Braille abrégé (abbreviated Braille, “Grade B Braille” in English) - is often used in technical kinds of writing, including school text books.

This includes special characters for letter combinations such the English “ing” or “th”.

These are not international – for example in French Braille “ing” (like in le parking) is always spelled out: i-n-g.

A British Braille reader coming here will spend some months learning the French Grade 2 combinations.