On 7 January 2009, the European Blind Union (EBU) announced the winners of
the Onkyo 2008 Braille contest at the closing session of the World Conference on
Braille held at the UNESCO in Paris to mark Louis Braille’s two hundred
birthday.
The contest is a worldwide initiative planned and sponsored by Onkyo and by
Tenji Mainichi, two Japanese firms actively engaged in the promotion of Braille.
EBU was responsible for running its European strand and for selecting the
winners.
54 competing essays, contributed by 16 European countries, were submitted to the
selection panel. The panel found it extremely difficult to make its final
decision in view of the excellent quality of the essays.
The winners are :
• First Prize (Ootsuki) : Mr Antonio Martin Figueroa, age 56 (Spain).
• Excellent Work Prize, junior category : Miss Kristina Misiunaite van Schie, aged 13 (the Netherlands).
• Excellent Work Prize, senior category : Mrs Joke Clazing, aged 55 (the Netherlands).
• Fine Works Prizes, junior category : Miss Mari-Liis Täht, 19 (Estonia), and Mr Thomas Mondelli, 20 (France).
• Fine Works Prizes, senior category : Mrs Edvige Maria Pagani, 66 (Italy), and Mrs Amna Hrvat, 27 (Bosnia).
All essays celebrated the continued relevance and significance of Braille in
blind people’s lives. As EBU President Lord Low put it “two hundred years after
Louis Braille’s birth in 1809, Braille is still alive and will continue to
enlighten generations of blind people to come. Braille is nothing less than the
key to liberation for blind people”.
For Antonio Martin Figueroa, First Prize winner, “Louis Braille has eased my
breathing, taught me to walk, to detect and step over the stones, to apply
technique so that the words chiselled in my mind become a work unique in form
and structure”.