Bay Village Schools is the site of new Braille Production Center

Left-to-right: ET Brailler trainer Jerry Whittaker, Teacher of Visually Impaired Helen Zdrojewski, Braillist Lisa Wilson and Assistant Superintendent of Special Services Martha Patton.

The Bay Village City School District has been selected as a site for converting digital text to braille learning materials for local, visually-impaired students. 

Students and districts in our area will benefit from The Incidental Braille Production Center equipment as a result of the Bay Village district receiving the BEST Grant (Braille Excellence for Students and Teachers, a United States Department of Education grant). The production center will allow districts to produce learning materials in braille much more efficiently and at less cost. Area braillists have been training on the equipment over the summer.

The grant was written by Helen Zdrojewski, Teacher of the Visually Impaired for the Bay Village City School District. "Braille is a critical skill for visually-impaired children to learn," she said. "Audio is a nice addition, but braille is reading. It is like the difference between listening to a recording and reading from a printed page or a screen for sighted individuals. It is absolutely a necessary skill."

The BEST grant, under the direction of Paula Mauro, coordinator at the Center for Instructional Supports and Accessible Materials (CISAM), is a statewide project of professional development, technical assistance and product development dedicated to Braille literacy, Braille instruction, Braille materials and Braille technology in Ohio schools.

Zdrojewski also recently received, on behalf of the school district and student Jennifer Kasunick, a gift of Window Eyes, one of the most effective screen reader software programs with Braille output. The program will provide Jennifer access to much of the information available through computers to help her keep pace with today’s high levels of information processing. The Hyland Software product and gift is part of the Westlake company’s mission of promotion and development of youth education in technology, and expansion of its local districts' capacity for education through the use of technology.