A standard for Braille on Pharmaceutical Packaging was completed and adopted earlier this year by the European Standards Organisation (CEN) and is now available in the UK as British Standard BS EN 15823:2010 entitled “Packaging – Braille on Packaging for Medicinal Products”.

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.