The Braille on pharmaceutical packaging in Europe and North America is clearly under way from October 2005.
There are several ways to provide the medicine package with the Braille labelling.
The most common are:
Embossing: Embossing involves the use of a male and a female die. The substrate for the carton or label is placed between two dies and a force is applied to create the Braille dots. During the production process it is common and economical to use tooling which both embosses the Braille and cuts/creases the substrate for the pack. This is a single pass process. It is also possible to apply the Braille and cut/crease the substrate in separate operations using separate cut/crease and Braille tooling (two pass process).
Screen-printing: This process can be used on different substrates e.g. paper, carton board and polymers. The integration of Braille fonts onto packaging components is normally treated as an additional colour and printed using screen technology. The dots are usually transparent to not affect the legibility of the graphics and text underneath.
Integral Braille: Containers may be manufactured incorporating Braille in their structure.
Adhesive labels: Braille can be incorporated onto adhesive labels which are subsequently applied to packaging during the manufacture of the medicinal product. These can be produced by a variety of processes.