Braille Week at Vision Empower!

Vision Empower recently organised a series of Braille reading and writing competitions across 34 special schools of Odisha, Jharkhand, Tripura, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka from 4th to 14 January 2024. This was held as part of observing World Braille Day and honouring the remarkable invention of Louis Braille that continues to empower people with visual impairment in literacy.

The series of competitions engaged 227 students from grades 4 to 8, through reading and writing segments where the the participants showcased their Braille skills.

In the Reading Competition, the students were divided into two groups, the Beginner Group and the Advance Group. The Beginners Group focused on fundamental skills like word reading, pronunciation, and reading speed. Meanwhile, the Advanced Readers Group emphasized higher-order abilities, revolving around comprehension and story reading.

For the Writing Competition as well, the students were divided into two groups, a Beginner Group and an Advance Group.

Beginners underwent dictation to assess writing speed and accuracy, while Advanced Writers tackled writing a paragraph to evaluate both accuracy and speed. This dual approach ensured a comprehensive evaluation of participants’ Braille writing skills at different proficiency levels.

The reading segment allowed 3 minutes for traditional book reading and 10 minutes for Hexis, a Braille refreshable device. This dual approach tested the students in both traditional and technological Braille literacy. During the writing competition, participants were given a concise 10 minutes to demonstrate their Braille writing skills.

The competition was supervised by VE coordinators as the students were judged on the following scoring indicators: pronunciation, speed, comprehension, and accuracy. The winners were presented with talking watches, and all participants were acknowledged with consolation certificates.