BRAILLED IT — A Documentary Filmed by the Blind, for the Blind

Every year, the best under-18 braille readers and writers in the English-speaking world come to Los Angeles to compete in the Braille Challenge. For one weekend, these blind and low-vision kids aren’t the minority in the room as they make new friends, go head-to-head against old rivals, and strive for the rare opportunity to be recognized for something beyond their disability. Empowering them to become filmmakers, BRAILLED IT gives these kids cameras and has them document the event on their own. Their often-disorienting cinematography challenges sighted audiences to follow the action on their terms, with audio description and binaural sound helping audiences understand this unique cinematic world through non-visual cues. Ultimately, the kids’ honest, personal, and emotional footage makes the human drama of their experience—and the true power of literacy—accessible for all. Learn more and support the Braille Challenge.

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 hyperlegible font designed for low-vision viewers—features we believe make the film stronger. Because 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. —David Grabias