Windsor High School prints what may be the first braille yearbook https://t.co/G1jkytpEm4 pic.twitter.com/N0T9g5Okaf
— The Press Democrat (@NorthBayNews) November 8, 2016
When the students on the yearbook committee of Windsor High School in Windsor, California, won $500 at a summer yearbook camp (“It’s not as lame as it sounds, I promise,” said Editor-in-Chief Charlie Sparacio), they started brainstorming ideas of how to use the extra money.
They thought of senior Maycie Vorreiter, who has been blind since birth, and came up with the idea to print the yearbook in braille for her.
The idea caught on, and when they approached the company that prints the yearbooks, Walsworth, they had never heard of such a thing — but they would figure out how to make it happen.
The braille version of the yearbook would end up costing $4,000 — far exceeding the $500 they had started out with. But the yearbook committee split up the cost between the school’s budget and the yearbook publisher, to make this a reality for Vorreiter.
The finished product sits a foot high — split into four volumes of 8 ½-by-11-inch paper 3 inches thick. There’s no writing or design on the cover or inside the yearbook, reports The Press Democrat, just plain white paper with a black spiral binding and a little white label on the cover that says Windsor High School 2016 Braille Volumes 1-4.
Vorreiter had bought a yearbook every year of school, and usually her instructional assistant, Sheila Womack, or her twin brother, Taylor, would read it to her. “I’ve ordered a yearbook every year, basically just to be included in the whole end-of-year yearbook signature stuff,” Vorreiter told The Press Democrat.
At one point, Womack was turning all of the signatures and messages from her friends into braille for her. But as the years went on, the sheer number of friends and signatures became too much.
Her friends also tried recording audio messages for her. “But then people didn’t really know what to say,” Vorreiter said. “So senior year came around, and I was like, I don’t even see the point of ordering this. … I actually didn’t even know if a yearbook had been ordered, but then at the end of the school year, they were like, ‘It’s being created, and oh by the way we’re making it in braille.’”
According to The Press Democrat, this is the first braille yearbook ever created. It’s a truly amazing gesture from her friends and other students at Windsor High School.
The yearbook committee thought Vorreiter really deserved this gesture, as she is so inspiring to other students.
“Maycie’s tenacity is an inspiration to me,” senior Samantha Hayman said in the WHS Student Bulletin. “She is the reason I wrestle — if she doesn’t let being blind stop her from trying new things, how can I let a fact that I am a woman stop me from wrestling,” Hayman added.
Another amazing part to this story? Editor-in-Chief Sparacio also wanted to include braille into everyone’s copy of the yearbook, printing the yearbook theme “Finding Our Way” in braille on all the approximate 800 covers.
The project was kept a secret as much as possible, and they didn’t tell Vorreiter and her family until the end of the year. When she finally got her copy of the yearbook in October, she was shocked.
“When I got it, I was just so amazed and excited,” she said. “I couldn’t wait to see how it was all done. I didn’t know what it would be like. … It was one of those really awesome moments that I would want to relive again. My hope is that in the future, if there are other visually impaired students that go through high school, they get a yearbook for their senior year, too.”
Vorreiter now lives in Albany, New York, and is enrolled at The Orientation Center for the Blind where she takes mobility and living skills classes five days a week.
Vorreiter, and the students at WHS who made this happen, are inspirations to all of us.
h/t: USA Today