Except that most people don't use Braille letter by letter - they use grade 2 Braille which combines multiple letters into a single character - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Braille

Could be done in a font with ligatures.

Turns out that ligatures in common font formats are quite powerful! See e.g. http://www.sansbullshitsans.com/ or https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode