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Braille Challenge Tests Visually Impaired Students

Tribune photo by JIM REED

Logan Sherrod competes in the Braille typing competition.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 27, 2009

TAMPA - Imagine you're in front of a typewriter, ordered to transcribe a conversation on a tape recorder. Your keyboard only has seven keys and that includes a space bar.

You have to translate words into a complicated code of dots and contractions. You can't open your eyes and someone in the corner is timing you.

That's the challenge faced by 31 blind students at the Central Florida Regional Braille Challenge on Friday at the Florida Instructional Materials Center for the Visually Impaired in South Tampa.

The students ranged in grade levels from first to 12th, said Sue Glaser, coordinator of the challenge.

After a raucous pep rally that included a thumping drum line from Blake High School, and cheers from parents and friends, each group lit out for a quiet classroom where the challenge, a program of the Braille Institute of America, began.

The instructions weren't easy, names went on the upper left corner, page numbers had to be put on every page, recorders could be adjusted to slow down or speed up and mistakes in words would detract from the score as would omitted words.

This was the final challenge in Florida and drew the most contestants, Glaser said. Students came from nine counties, some from as far away as Seminole, Marion and Orange counties, she said.

In Florida, the top 60 scorers would go to Los Angeles for the national challenge, which is the only national academic competition for blind students, she said.

The contestants were eager.

"They are rocking," Glaser said just before the pep rally began. But that's not unusual for students with the desire to learn the complicated system.

"On top of all else they have to learn," she said, talking about regular classes in school, "they have to learn this entirely different code, a code that takes years, sometimes, to learn."

But it's worth it, she said. "Ninety percent of blind job holders," she said, "are Braille literate."

You'd think that the numbers of students learning Braille would be rising, but the opposite is true, she said. Technology is stepping in with advances that are luring some visually impaired people away from the complicated system.

But technology won't replace everything, she said.

"You will always need to be able to write things down," she said.
Michelle Yongue, 11, was putting on her game face in a center table. This is not new for the shy student at Forest Lakes Elementary School in Oldsmar. Last year, she competed and was in national
finals.

Her impairment doesn't get in the way of her life, she said.

"I ride horses, swim and do gymnastics," she said.

About 300 students in the Hillsborough school system are visually impaired.

Cindy Collins had taught blind students for 30 years before retiring. On Friday, she volunteered to grade the contestants. She is not blind, but decided to learn Braille when she was a high school senior in St. Petersburg.

"It's not easy to learn Braille," she said. "I've been doing it for years and I'm still learning."

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