Blindness Puts Up Hurdle for Speller

Quick, spell kaleidoscope. But wait, that’s not fair. You just saw the word.

Now try spelling it without looking at it. Without using a pencil and paper to scribble it down. Without even visualizing the letters. A little more difficult, right?

That’s what 11-year-old Scott Blanks had to do to win the Anaheim City School District spelling bee this week. Scott, who has never seen a written word because he was born blind, had to rely solely on his memory and his smarts to capture the prize.

Scott, a sixth-grader at Clara Barton Elementary School in Anaheim, correctly spelled kaleidoscope after the other finalist slipped up. Then he clinched the contest by correctly spelling psychology.

“I try to remember the spelling of a word after I’ve read it somewhere,” Scott said. Although he could not really explain how, Scott said he sees the word in his head “in a sense,” without knowing what the letters look like.

A blind person learns spelling after “a lot of practice, which Scott does. He’s a very bright boy,” said John McGowan, who teaches the visually handicapped at Clara Barton. “It is unusual for a blind person to be a good speller.”

Even being an avid reader, which Scott is, does not necessarily help a blind person spell, McGowan said.

Braille is not always a literal transcription, he said. Although there is a Braille symbol for every letter of the alphabet, when words are transcribed into Braille, they often are abbreviated, using Braille signs, he said. For example, the letter b in Braille also stands for the word but, and c also stands for can.

A word in Braille can consist of both letters and contractions, he said. For example, the word forgettable in Braille becomes the symbol for for , plus the Braille sign for the letters g-e-t-t-a , followed by the Braille sign for the syllable ble.

“The spelling ability of the blind, of course, is comparable to that of anyone else,” McGowan said. “But through Braille, it becomes more difficult.” Scott, he said, “has to compensate with his memory.”

And while the other contestants in the spelling bee were allowed to scribble their words on paper to see if they looked right, Scott couldn’t.

And he did miss a few words-- mayonnaise, ukulele and incandescent, for example--but the other finalist, Millicent Encarnacion of Benito Juarez Elementary School, missed them, too, so the competition continued. (Scott said he had never even heard the word incandescent before, so he had little hope of getting it correct.) The contest became a bit of a cliffhanger at the end, McGowan said, with Scott and Millicent both spelling words correctly, then both spelling them incorrectly, for about 10 minutes before Scott finally won.

Scott said he studied for the bee with his mother, who read difficult words for him to spell aloud. “If I got it wrong, she’d tell me,” he said. Despite its difficulty, spelling is important for the blind, McGowan said. Scott, he said, writes his assignments on a computer specially programmed with a voice synthesizer. (The computer speaks out loud the letters as he types them, and then speaks the words and sentences he has written.) Teachers can see if he has misspelled a word when he turns in a printout of his work.

Ruining a First Impression

“It’s particularly important for the visually handicapped to be able to use a typewriter and a computer to communicate with the sighted,” McGowan said. Yet, a misspelled word can create the impression that the blind person is stupid or illiterate, he said. “It can ruin a first impression.”

Scott did not hesitate to enter the spelling bee, just as he has not been afraid to tackle any challenge in life, his mother said.

Scott, who is in the program for gifted students at school, “is very bright. He amazes me. If he wasn’t my own child, I’d say, ‘Gosh, look at him,’ ” said Judy Blanks.

He rides a bicycle, although other people learning to balance a two-wheeler rely much on sight. True, the bike has training wheels on it, but Scott’s parents know it is time to take them off. Scott cannot ride any distance alone, but his parents may tie a rope from his bike to his father’s bike to guide him.

Scott also rides a scooter and can roller skate. “He doesn’t have an attitude (of being handicapped). He’s not frightened of things. He tries a lot of things,” his mother said.

Scott said he also likes more sedentary activities, such as playing video games at home.

Memorize the Sounds

“I memorize the sounds. . . . I can’t explain it,” he said, describing his playing technique. Among his favorite games are Pole Position, a simulation of driving a car on a race course, and Asteroids, in which he shoots down objects in space. He is also a fan of horror movies, apparently because of the action and sounds, McGowan said. And when most people look away during the gory parts, “I don’t have to,” Scott said with a laugh.

When he grows up, Scott would like to be a zoologist “because I like animals a lot,” or a computer programmer, he said.

Scott lives in Los Alamitos, but the school district there sends its visually handicapped students to the Anaheim school. McGowan has been his teacher since Scott was in preschool.

When Scott is in class with sighted children, McGowen said, his classmates can take notes or look up something later in books. But Scott has to remember what has been said or read to him.

When Scott qualified for the Gifted and Talented Education program several years ago, it “had nothing to do” with his blindness. McGowan said. “In fact, it was despite” it.

Unfortunately for Scott, his spelling bee days are over for a while. Although he won the contest as the best of the sixth-graders from Anaheim’s 21 elementary schools, he lost out in the countywide competition Thursday night, McGowan said.