Braille House has launched our End of Financial Year campaign and we have had a lot of great media support including the following story that ran in the Sunshine Coast Daily.
Braille book shortage sparks schoolgirl’s call for help
Abbey Halter
18th May 2021
Schoolgirl Eva Garcia’s favourite thing to do is read but finding enough books in braille has proven a hard task.
The Year 4 student at Chancellor State College lost her vision just a week after her first birthday.
She had contracted a rare virus called viral encephalitis that damaged the visual processing sensor in her brain.
Eva’s mum, Laura Garcia, said she was lucky Eva, now 9, only had vision impairment because her initial medical projections were much more bleak.
“It’s a bit of a catch 22 because generally the virus is fatal, so she wasn’t supposed to survive and if she did survive there was supposed to be massive motor development and cognitive issues,” Mrs Garcia, 40, said.
“But for some very rare and strange reason the virus just damaged her visual processing centre.”
She said her daughter was learning how to see again through a lot of a lot of visual stimulation exercises and visual intervention strategies.
Chancellor State College student Eva Garcia uses braille to read after losing her vision to a rare virus.
“Fast forward eight years and Eva can now recognise colours, she knows what a bike, scooter and chairs look like and she’s also started to recognise letters and is starting to write which is so rewarding seeing her become more independent.”
Eva is a member of Braille House, an organisation that empowers people who are blind or have low vision to become literate and be able to read whatever they wish.
She has been enlisted as a talent for the new Southern Cross Austereo’s Community Service Announcement for the charity.
Mrs Garcia said she and her daughter had been borrowing cook books from the Braille House library as Eva wanted to be a chef one day.
“It’s definitely been very challenging, obviously every parent will have expectations of what your child will achieve and what their day to day life will consist of and that was thrown out the window when Eva lost her vision,” Mrs Garcia said.
“But I guess what we keep in mind is that it could have been so much worse – she could possibly not have been here with us today.”
Braille House is launching a national fundraising campaign to help raise money for more books to be printed in braille for people like Eva as currently for every 100 books a sighted child can read, only five will be available for vision impaired children.
To donate- click here.