Brailled It

Every year, the top under-18 braille readers and writers from across the English-speaking world gather in Los Angeles to compete in the Braille Challenge, which tests their proficiency across several categories. For one weekend, blind and low-vision kids are no longer the minority. As they form friendships and face old rivals, these young contestants pursue the rare chance to be recognized not for their disability but for their immense skills.

Brailled It directly places the camera in the hands of three particular competitors: 16-year-old Salome Cummins, 11-year-old Isaiah Gauthier, and 11th grader Christopher Morgan. With GoPros strapped to their chests, the film centers the young competitors' perspectives, as audiences witness firsthand how they navigate a world all too often constructed without them in mind. They face off with determination against their top-flight competition and a demanding series of tests, which ask them to transcribe audio into braille as fast as possible and analyze other braille texts. Reconnecting with old friends and making new bonds, each competitor-cinematographer also shares their various hopes and fears with peers who can truly relate to them. As they personally document the competition, their fragmented imagery, immersive sound, and candid moments of nerves, boredom, joy, and triumph create a uniquely immersive cinematic experience. 

Designed with accessibility at its core, featuring audio description and open captioning, Brailled It shifts authorship and perspective to the community on screen, revealing a world defined not by limitations but by mastery, ambition, and the transformative power of literacy.

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FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT: "A labor of love, BRAILLED IT is the result of a rigorous creative process aimed from the beginning at making work in as collaborative and accessible a way as possible. While the filmmaking team initially experimented with ways to document blind youth competing at the Braille Challenge, it quickly became clear that the kids needed to tell the story themselves, so we made them our cinematographers — discussing what it meant to be both the subject of a film and the person doing the filming, training them on the equipment, and empowering them to choose what to capture and how. As our editorial collaborators reviewed the footage, it became apparent that these kids were developing their own cinematic language: cameras pointed away from the scene, faces rarely shown, audio prioritized over picture — an approach that may initially frustrate sighted audiences but ultimately invites them into a new perspective.

We also thought deeply about Audio Description and how it could serve as a creative tool for blind and sighted audiences alike, alongside open captions in a hyper legible font designed for low-vision viewers — features we believe make the film stronger. Because the film and video remain largely inaccessible to blind audiences who have long been denied media-making tools, we hope BRAILLED IT inspires real change by reimagining what cinema can be and how it can be made and consumed. Our subjects remain as positive about the filmmaking experience as they were at the start and continue as enthusiastic collaborators in shaping our outreach campaign; together, as a team of sighted and blind filmmakers, we hope BRAILLED IT inspires you to consider what blind filmmaking can be. We know these goals are ambitious, but you have got to dream big. Thank you for taking the time to watch and consider BRAILLED IT."