[Nfbv-announce] NEWSPAPER STORY ON LOCAL PARTICIPANT IN COIN CEREMONY

Thu Apr 9 01:27:04 UTC 2009

The story below appeared in the Wednesday, April 8, edition of the 
Cumberland (Maryland) Times-News:

Brandon's Braille
Sarah Moses
Cumberland Times-News

April 08, 2009 09:05 am

- MCHENRY - Seven-year-old Brandon Pickrel was one of three children to 
speak at the unveiling of the Louis Braille 200th birthday commemorative 
silver dollar coin.
"It was a very prideful moment for us," Trudy Pickrel, Brandon's mother, 
said of the event held at the U.S. Mint in Washington. "He worked very hard 
on (the speech.) It was a proclamation that he and two other children read. 
To have a first-grader reading, there were people who were just very proud 
of how he'd done reading Braille."
Brandon, a McHenry resident and first-grader at Accident Elementary, has 
been learning to read Braille since he was 2 years old, Trudy said, but he 
is still learning what is called contracted Braille. Contracted Braille, 
rather than spelling out individual letters, has a specific symbol for a 
word. Brandon has knowledge of phonics and first-grade Braille.
"I don't like to read, but my favorite book is 'Where the Wild Things Are,' 
but I can't read it myself," Brandon said. "That's because the big books are

hard."
His favorite book, like many others, is printed in contracted Braille, his 
mother said, but he is continuing to learn, which was especially important 
for the proclamation he read when the National Federation for the Blind 
unveiled the commemorative coin.
Brandon said he was just a little nervous when he went up to speak, but that

he was very excited before and had even bounced on the hotel beds. Both his 
parents and his two younger sisters attended the unveiling ceremony with 
him.
Part of Brandon's speech, Trudy said, was to express concern that only about

10 percent of blind children in America are being taught Braille. She added 
that 90 percent of employed blind people use Braille and that $10 from the 
sale of each coin will go toward Braille Literacy in America.
Brandon was the youngest of the three who spoke, and many people in 
attendance reportedly were impressed with the larger words he had to read 
from the proclamation.
Children who are neither fully blind nor fully sighted are made to rely on 
the little sight they have, Trudy said, and that was part of the reason she 
has advocated bringing a vision teacher to Garrett County. Many of these 
children learn to read faster with Braille and could use it as an added 
tool.
This was not the first time Brandon has been asked to speak, and he has not 
only spoken at other events but recently was the recipient of a gift to help

him purchase a laptop and software from the Deep Creek and Friendsville 
Lions clubs.
To Trudy, one of the best parts of having Brandon speak at the coin 
unveiling was that it gave him the opportunity to meet a variety of people, 
including a NASA engineer, the special assistant to President Barack Obama 
for disability policy, a singer, doctors, lawyers and parents who were all 
legally blind.
"I liked it," Brandon said. "I can read and write. I can go to college."
Because of his recent speech, Brandon and his sisters were invited to the 
White House on Thursday to participate in the annual egg roll.
Contact Sarah Moses at smoses at times-news.com.

Photos

Brandon Pickrel, 7, reads a proclamation in Braille during the unveiling of 
the Louis Braille 200th birthday commemorative silver dollar coin at the 
U.S. Mint in Washington recently. Pickrel is learning to read contracted 
Braille, which doesn't spell out individual letters and instead uses a 
specific symbol for a word. Cumberland Times-News