Transcript for 2023-2024 Winners of the Braille Readers Are Leaders Contest Announcement
Mark: Welcome everybody to our Read Across America 2024 announcement of the winners for the 2023 2024 Braille Readers Are Leaders contest. I'm Mark Riccobono, executive director for the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, the primary sponsor for the Braille Readers Are Leaders contest. I'm really happy to be joined by a couple of Braille readers, who are definitely leaders, for this announcement first and foremost a member of the board of directors for the American Action Fund from California, also the chair of our Braille Readers are Leaders contest, LisaMaria. Welcome to the announcements.
LM: hello hello!
Mark: We have to come up with a fancy name for this like we don't have Grammy's. I don't know we'll have to figure that out for next year. LM, I should not neglect mentioning that of course um back in the day you were a participant in the Braille Readers Are Leaders contest way back in the day.
LM: Yes! Yeah we won’t spend a lot of time on that.
Mark: This next person also was a participant some years ago but in true form living up to the Braille Readers Are Leaders Mantra. She now serves currently as the general counsel for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This is a Senate confirmed government appointment so it's a big deal and we're really happy that she has agreed to join us here, Karla Gilbride thank you for being with us.
Karla: Hi I'm excited to be here. Maybe we could call the awards the Braillies.
Mark: That's right that's
LM: I love it!
Mark: Maybe we should have a yeah we might have to have a contest I
LM: I like that, a contest to name the contest.
Mark: That's right but it is a big reveal because we do have some really important things to announce that we haven't yet publicly announced about the concert, the contest. We should have a concert sometime. Before we get to those details I mean let's talk a little bit about Braille because of course our goal here is not just to um help people win prizes but really to spark the imagination and the literacy that happens through Braille reading and each of you have um been part of that and have benefited from Braille so I mean maybe I'll just ask the general question: how has Braille played an important role in each of your lives.
Karla: Well I have been a Braille leader, a Braille leader [laughs], a Braille reader um from as far far back as I can remember starting you know in in probably nursery school or kindergarten um I was taught Braille and it just opened up all sorts of doors of imagination to to read about far away places and fantasy stories and as a kid I thought that I had a super power because I could read even after the lights went out at night and even on school trips when other kids were getting car sick or motion sick I could still read and I sort of took those calluses on my fingers as a as a badge of honor because Braille just you know was an amazing um door opener in my in my um education and now in my professional life I use Braille all the time to do my work um I have a Braille display on my computer and I use it to edit documents to read legal briefs as a lawyer and I even used bra notes um when I argued a case in the US Supreme Court a couple of years ago so Braille is just an indispensable part of my life.
LM: Awesome. I love how you brought up, this is LM, I love how you brought up the imagination and the world you diving into other worlds via reading um and that's really how I came to really love Braille and um pursue it and integrate it into my life I started read Braille around the first grade and um I wanted to read Braille badly um I really loved books when I went blind and um I didn't I I didn't have access to books the way I did before going blind as a little kid and bra reopen that door for me and I was hungry to keep reading and learning and learning and learning um and so when I you know learned about a contest like the bra readers or leaders contest I was like heck yeah this is perfect I you know bring it on um and you know today I use well taking a step back um I had Braille under my fingertips all the way through senior year of high school um everything was brailed for me we had Braille clerk in our school district I was so very lucky for that um and because in some ways I was spoiled I was considered spoiled to have all that Braille because nobody has without much Braille typically you have to you know balance out with other methods to to read um but I was so I would never see Braille again in college and Beyond because it was so scarce and and archaic and um I took that on as a challenge and in college um I had majority of my tests in in Braille I had a Braille copy of my tests um you know some of my English books were in Braille but um I had a lot more Braille than people told me I would expect in in college and you know today I read a lot of books and some of them are in Rail and my grocery lists another to- list s in Braille.
Mark: I'm really glad that that the two of you had early exposure to Braille of course I did not in the public schools and so you know for me this is where the adult part of the contest is um really significant because I really didn't get to know that Braille was important. I didn't get that message from the education system and I think the fact that we now have a contest to help adults connect with other real reading adults and get encouraged to read because of course as an adult too you know the way that you really build your fluency and speed in Braille is by reading right people ask me all the time like is it hard to learn Braille I'm like well the code's not hard you know you already know the alphabet you already know words so you're just learning to decode them but the way that you learn to read is just by reading and I it's kind of funny because I I kind of remember some of those transitions we're like I don't have to think about the word I'm reading and Braille anymore just read it but you know when you're a kid and you grow up with it you don't really recognize those transitions because they're natural we do want there to be some recognition in that Braille is important and participating in the contest is important.
Mark: I'm not going to go through all the prize levels but first of all a number of our prizes come through the generosity of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults and also our partners at the National Federation of the Blind who we want to acknowledge as really helping to promote the contest and get individuals at the Grassroots level involved. We also have some donations from the American Printing House for the Blind we're going to talk about those later but thank you very much to the American Printing House you know a lot of people think ah the printing house it gets government money it's a nonprofit it's not a big deal but the fact that they have made the commitment they have to this program is significant and um it does take away from other things they could do also I want to recognize Seedlings for providing some gift certificates to our program we do have a number of other prizes from partners that we've connected with and some of them have provided us discounts and getting those want to acknowledge the national Braille press who has worked with the American Action Fund for some time um cool well we do have a lot of prizes and what what will happen is after this Grand announcement we will our team will start getting those prize packages out you'll probably see them arrive you know before the end of March. So be on the watch um for those and again congratulations to everybody who participated in the Braille Readers Are Leaders contest. and I don't want to forget we also put in a new category which is really just for bragging rights this year it was a pilot project inviting um sighted teachers of blind students to um practice their Braille reading and I know we got great reception in social media and a lot of great engagement by teachers in that. Hats off to Krystal Guillory of Louisiana for encouraging us to pursue this idea I imagine we will um be expanding upon that in the next contest year but thanks to the teachers that you know show their true dedication to Braille by making sure they can their students by getting in there and reading Braille also so that's really cool so we did have a lot of minutes read LM I'm wondering if you have any stats you want to share with us.
LM: I like this number it's cool it's awesome. There was 590,718 total minutes read, over half a million minutes.
[cheers]
Mark: We've delayed as long as we could you know trying to hold the suspense I think we should you know start the what do we say Braillies make our official announcements we are going to hold the grand prize announcements though to the end so I do want to now turn it over to LM to announce officially our contest category winners for 2023 24
LM: I have some winners here to read for the 2024 Braille Readers Are Leaders contest starting with the youth winners um those in the Kinder and first grade levels um we are tied for first place um so we have Sawyer D of New York with 6,467 minutes tied for first place with Zachary D of New York perhaps related to each other maybe um also at 6,467 minutes. Second place we have Max T of Maine with 1,496 minutes. Third place we we have Sawyer S of Georgia with 1,175 minutes. That's a lot of minutes for Kinders in first grade. I know I have a first grader and I don't even think she read 500 minutes in that time.
In our second and third grade categories we have first place um Luise S. of Virginia with 2,590 minutes second place we have Mila C of California, woohoo to California represent, 2147 minutes and in third place we have Zayden W of Florida with 1,837 minutes I also have a third grader.
Fourth and fifth grade so we're getting a little old now. First place winner is I'm going to pronounce names today to the best of my ability um in first place we have Shaindel E. of New Jersey with 3,080 minutes. Second place we have Maeve E. of Utah with 3,000 minutes, right on the that. Third place we have Zora W. of New York 1,755 we've got a lot of New Yorkers
Karla: I'm a New Yorker so I'm proud of all the New Yorkers in the contests go New York!
LM: Now we're into Middle School 6th through 8th grade first place with um 7,204 minutes is Narjis K. of Louisiana over 7,000 minutes I love it. Second place we have Gabriel W of Florida with 5,250 minutes and third place we have Freya S. of Kentucky with 3,557 minutes.
LM: And for last category in youth high schoolers 9th through 12th grade we have first place Sierra C coming in from Tennessee with 14,820 minutes go yeah. In second place we have Amare L. of North Carolina with 6,260 minutes and third place we have Samaija B. of Tennessee with 2,936 minutes. So exciting those are the youth Braille Readers Are Leaders.
[cheers]
Karla: Congratulation!
Mark: Congratulations everyone! We do want to celebrate everybody so if we pronounce your name wrong feel free to let us know we'll get it right next year. Hats off to New York a lot of participation there that's great yeah.
LM: All right so in our adult categories we have a novice category for beginning Braille readers um in first place we have B.J. Snyder of guess where New York with 13,910 minutes. Second place we have on Alfonso Simental of Colorado with 12,360 minutes and in third place in our adult novice category we have Arianna Elizabeth Del Bene, that looks cool in Braille, of New York with 10,035 minutes.
LM: Onto our adult intermediate category first place we have Robert Gardner of Illinois only with 8,366 minutes second place we have Joseph Giacinto of Arizona with 8,000 minutes flat and in third place we have Karen Larsen of South Dakota representing, 7,523 minutes
LM: Here's an expert level this is where Karla and I would be if we were part of this competition, we would be neck to neck and very competitive. Braille, I think the only thing I'm expert at. First place is Angela Randall of Ohio.
LM: How many minutes do you think? it's a lot.
Mark: 12,000?
LM: More.
Karla: 20,000
LM: All right! Well it's in between. Karla you're a lot closer. 18,820! Woo! that is a lot of minutes I love it. Second place we have Cassandra Xavier of Massachusetts with wow that was a close 18,774.
Karla: Oh wow down to the wire between those two.
LM: I wonder if they were talking to each other. I mean really those minutes are so close and then we have in third plays um Anna Trotman of Alabama with 18,240 minutes. These experts were serious.
Karla: Yeah they were they were putting a lot of time into their reading.
LM: yeah yeah and we had a new category this year with teachers applying students um and I'm really glad to see how full this category got with teachers who did sign up to read so I'm very excited about this new category and I'm very excited to help promote reading and teaching Braille to their students um with this teacher category so in our first place slot we have um I don't know if she pronounces it Melissa or Meliza (Meliza) Lorenzo of Florida with 4,067 minutes. Second place we have teacher Debbie Wright of Florida with 2,510 minutes and in third place in our teacher category we have Sarah Savell of Louisiana with 2,032 minutes. Those are all of our first to third place winners for the 2023 2024 Braille Readers Are Leaders.
[cheers]
Mark: Very nice and a lot of great great reading there. And hopefully those who didn't make the top three will you know sharpen up their skills and get ready for the next contest next year now. We've saved the grand prizes for the end and we're going to let Karla announce those because she's the only one amongst us who's read Braille in front of the Supreme Court. One of the reasons we switched from pages to minutes as has been indicated is you know, we read Braille in so many different ways today and of course we read them on Braille displays often which it’s a little harder to count digital Pages. So we'll start with our adult category and I want to announce again our grand prizes provided by the American Printing House for the Blind so we have for the adults Grand Prize winner and you get entries into the grand prize drawings based on reaching certain reading levels and that sort of thing in the contest everybody gets an entry but you can earn more entries through your work in the contest so for the adults we have to give away a Chameleon which is a 20 cell Braille display. It's much like the e-readers you might have seen elsewhere it's a product distributed by the AP it's a great little compact Braille display you could fit lots of books on it so let's see who's going to get it.
Karla: The grand prize for the adults goes to Lenora Robertson of South Carolina! Congratulations Lora congratulations!
[cheers]
Mark: very nice very exciting now the moment I know the certainly our kiddos have been waiting for um we asked the American Printing House they have given us a grand prize now for a couple years and we asked them for the biggest grand prize that they could give us and um this year they have provided us with it we have not promoted it yet so this is really the true reveal and um it's really exciting the American Printing House for the Blind along with human wear and the national Federation of the blind has been working on the development of a tablet-like device that can um display Braille as well as graphics and that device will be officially launched um later this year it is being field tested right now so literally the student who wins this is going to be like one of the first kids maybe the first kid in the nation to own this device so the device is called the Monarch I have the box here it's very well packed so I didn't want to unpack the box but um so I'm holding the Box up but I want to let Karla and LM know that what's cool about this box is it has a tactile Monarch on the which is really cool um yeah I didn't want to I didn't want to unpack it but I do want to say that we are going to unpack it because um this is the year of the dragon and the Action Fund you know we have all of the Dragon Masters books on our website 17 of them and we announced a week ago or so or a couple weeks ago with the kickoff of the Year of the Dragon that we were putting into Braille the next um eight books in the series so we're going to load onto this device the first 17 books of the Dragon Master Series so that it'll come with a bunch of books already loaded on it nice nice nice awesome yeah so let's see who's going to get this cool device.
Karla: All right so the Monarch with all of the dragon books on it will be going to Zayden W of Florida! Congratulations Zayden!
[cheers]
Mark: All right I was sure you were going to say New York.
LM: That is so neat.
Mark: It is. Zayden is a lucky human. I'm wondering if Zayden is working on Braille under one of those top teachers that was reading Braille.
LM: Right I I suspect there might be a connection there.
Mark: that's cool. Thanks for being with us to make these announcements and again and congratulations to everybody who participated in the contest. We do want to thank the board of directors of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and adults for sponsoring this contest and to all of the volunteers who have helped make parts of the contest happen. We will be following up with contest participants looking for some feedback so please participate in that and please continue to promote Braille and everything you do and plan to participate next year. But before we get to next year's contest we should say that the Action Fund has a number of ways that you can get Braille including we distribute free Braille books every month through our program we have a website where you can exchange Braille books with folks and we run a Braille book fair which you can come to in person it will be happening during the convention of the National Federation of the Blind this summer in Orlando, Florida. You can read information all about this on our website actionfund.org and we hope that you will continue to participate in these activities as well they are all available at no cost before we close though.
Mark: Karla LM anything you want to share about Braille tips and tricks anything you want to leave us with before we wrap up
Karla: I just want to say I'm very proud and thrilled so many adults are participating especially the adult novice division because it's never too late to learn Braille it has so many benefits both professionally and in your everyday life I use Braille just to label things around my house so there you know there just no limit to the things that you can do that Braille will allow you to be more independent it works even when the batteries die on all the cool Tech and it's such an important skill so so congratulations to all the folks who are learning at any age any stage of life.
LM: Braille is a a such a valuable um part of my life and I'm glad that more and more people are um learning it and you know excited to see what you'll be able to accomplish with Braille yeah I plus one to everything Karla said. And Braille is nowhere near as difficult as one might think it is um don't let the naysayers hold you back from learning to read and love Braille. Embrace the Braille um in whatever matter fits you best right you may be an adult learner of Braille um and decide that you you don't need to sit down to read novels um but like Karla said you could use Braille to label things and tell the differences between packages and and whatnot but Braille I think is more available than ever because of Technology like the Chameleon like the Monarch, making it possible to get Braille under the fingertips of more and more people. So Braille is cool. Braille is beautiful. Yeah I'll end with that Braille is beautiful.
Mark: Thank you all again for being with us for this important announcement and I guess in closing I'll say if you're a Braille Reader you're on the journey to becoming a leader. Thank you for joining us today.
Voiceover: Learn more at action fund.org