Most pharmaceutical products are distributed in more than one country. At the moment the Braille characters for the letters A-Z and the numbers 0-9 (with the exception of France) are the same throughout Europe. However, each country’s Braille authority has often differing specifications for accented characters, symbols and punctuation. To be more cost effective and to reduce the possibility of making errors in Braille for pharmaceutical packaging the packaging industry would benefit from being able to use just one Braille code across the European Union. With that ultimate goal in mind the European Blind Union has issued a proposal for a standard E.U. Pharmaceutical Braille Table.

The EBU carried out a review of the Braille codes across the EU and have come up with proposals to achieve a single Braille character set for pharmaceutical labelling. Their proposed guidelines provide definitive answers to the many frequently asked questions we receive here at PharmaBraille about how Braille code should be implemented, such as spacing, abbreviations, capitalisation and fitting Braille on the pack.

We at PharmaBraille welcome the progress made to develop a standard for Pharmaceutical Braille and have already started work on a European Pharmaceutical Braille Standard font set. 

About the European Blind Union

The European Blind Union is a non-governmental, non profit making European organisation founded in 1984. It is one of the six regional bodies of the World Blind Union, and it promotes the interests of blind people and people with low vision in Europe.

It currently operates within a network of 45 national members including organisations from all 27 European Union member states, candidate nations and other major countries in geographical Europe.