Incarcerated women get certified to create braille books for visually impaired kids

Graduation day came at a place you might not expect: York Correctional Institution.

The women’s state prison has developed a program to certify inmates in braille transcription, and the work is helping visually-impaired kids across Connecticut. Five women graduated from the program on Thursday.

Seeing the beauty of a butterfly through your fingers: it is one way braille illuminates the world for blind children.

“Now they can feel what a butterfly feels like,” Patrick Hill, Correctional Industry Supervisor, said. “They can feel what a flower feels like. It’s all tactile.”

The incarcerated women are making the braille books that are going out to students.

“We get inmate workers in. They go through a course and they get trained, and they learn how to turn print to braille," Hill said.

Hill runs the program at the prison, which started in 2018. A total of 15 women have completed the York Braille Program. The first cohort graduated in 2020.

“It's pretty hard!” he said about learning braille. “We start everybody off on the Perkins Brailler. So with these you load it in. Load your paper in. And you go with six keys. And you go. This is how they learn. Typing the braille.”

Completion of the program means getting certified from the National Library of Congress in Literary Braille Transcribing.

Friends and families supported the grads at their ceremony, along with state officials.

“The chances for these young ladies to be successful once they re-enter society,” Angel Quiros, the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, said.

Quiros told the inmates the certification could change their futures.

“It's really important for anyone who's incarcerated,” Hill said. “You want them to learn and grow. And this gives them a great opportunity when they get out to be able to start their own business.”

Mastering the certification also means the inmates get to transcribe print books into braille books using computers and an embossing machine. It brings words and images to life, even something as intricate as the Taj Mahal.

“Once they get graduated and fully certified, that’s when they’re allowed to hop over to the computer,” Hill said.

When the books are done, the Bureau of Education Services for the Blind distributes them to students.

“I get anywhere from beginning reader books, to novels, to math books, to social studies, books,” Nancy Mothersele, Department of Aging and Disability Braille Coordinator, said.

Mothersele said there are 458 blind and visually impaired kids in Connecticut and 90 braille readers benefitting from the materials.

“This year, they've done over 100 books for several students in Connecticut that were needed in Braille,” she said.

The raised dots are a way to bridge gaps for blind children -- new connections at their fingertips.

“It opens their world,” Mothersele said. “There are six dots in a Braille cell. And you never know, until you actually see a little 3-year-old, 4-year-old run their fingers across that page, and it just opens up their entire world.”