J’burg girl to compete in national Braille contest

JOHNSBURG – Alexa Schwichow is among the best readers in the country – when it comes to Braille.

And this weekend, the 14-year-old will compete to find out whether she is, in fact, the best in her age group.

Schwichow, who is blind and will be a freshman at Johnsburg High School in the fall, is slated to compete in the National Braille Challenge on Saturday in California.

She was among 60 students who qualified for the competition.

The select few were whittled down from the more than 600 students who competed in the preliminaries nationwide.

“I’m really confident in myself,” said Schwichow, who’s been taking practice tests online to train for the event.

Schwichow uses a Braille­Note, which has refreshable display and can turn text from the computer into Braille.

It’s her fourth time going to the national competition, and she will compete against students in the junior varsity level, which is grades seven through nine. She hopes to place for the first time this year.

The competition is broken down into categories, such as speed and accuracy, chart and graph reading, comprehension and proofreading.

Schwichow was born blind and has Leber’s congenital amaurosis disease, which means that the rods and cones in her retina never developed. Aside from having very little light perception, she hardly has any vision, said her mom, Tina Schwichow.

However, Alexa goes to regular school and attends all regular classes. She uses Braille to adapt, which she started learning in preschool, but also has become a quick study of technology.

For example, her cell phone reads text messages out loud, and she can text back using the regular keypad, which she’s memorized.

“I can text better than my parents,” she said. “It’s awesome.”

Tina Schwichow said she was proud of her daughter.

“Not only does it help her, but it also shows the public that these kids can do anything a sighted person can do if they set their mind to it,” she said.

Nancy Niebrugge, director of the challenge, said the competition was a way to motivate students to learn Braille.

“Braille literacy has been on the decline, and it’s one way to reinforce how important it is,” she said.

She added that blind people who know Braille usually had an easier time succeeding in the sighted world after high school with both jobs and college.

The competition, which started on a regional level in southern California in 2000, now is open to students in grades one through 12 nationwide, Niebrugge said.