Blind Students Compete In Muskogee For Spot At National Braille Challenge

Students from all over the region met in Muskogee to put their braille skills to the test. They competed for their spot at the Braille Challenge Finals in Los Angeles, California. 

Several students gathered at the Oklahoma School for the Blind, ready to compete and test their braille skills.

"At first, I mostly kept doing it because I loved the braille challenge braille writer that I got. It worked a lot better than any others that I used," Hunter Pugh said as he reflected on his times competing in the Oklahoma Regional Braille Challenge. 

Hunter Pugh is a student at the school.

"I was diagnosed with retina blastoma, and both of my eyes were removed and replaced with prosthetics," he said. 

He felt under the weather the day of the competition but has competed several times, even earning his way to nationals.

"I know I started out just reading little braille cards and eating gummy Krabby Patties whenever I got them correctly," he said thinking back on when he learned how to read braille. 

News On 6 wasn't allowed to gather video of the competition because organizers said it might impact the test scores, so the people scoring the exams showed us how it worked.

"One of the tests that we would do on this it's called speed and accuracy," said scorer Julio Valdez. He was one of this year's test scorers and went over the student's exam sheets.

He and the other scorers judged based on things like spelling, reading comprehension, and proofreading.

"We will be reading the answer sheet and comparing it to the test sheet, and just making sure that they wrote what they were supposed to and followed all of the instructions like new lines, spacing, stuff like that," Valdez said. 

Julio used to participate in the braille challenge and has aged out, but he said these tests are important for people like him.

"In the blind community, the percentage of people that can read braille is very low and I think having competitions like this makes it more fun and it would encourage more kids to learn braille and get better at it to increase their literacy skills," he said.