“Sometimes dignity is simply being permitted to care about winning.”

“Despite the seemingly exotic presentation of Brailled It — its exclusive use of amateur photography by teens who quite literally can’t see what they’re doing, and its use of closed captioning in the form of a narrator describing all the visuals, everything about the way these kids behave feels natural. They read more as typical teenagers than as blind teenagers. Well, at least, typical for teenagers nerdy enough to be national qualifiers in a fundamentally academic competition.”

“The thing that really comes across in Brailled It is its free-spiritedness – the notion of a pressure-cooker competition that might ordinarily be a den for the cutthroat instead providing a safe space for kids who have been marginalized or overlooked by the wider world. “It’s so annoying when people just know you as the blind kid,” Gauthier grumbles on screen.”

“It’s impossible to see the world exactly as our subjects perceive it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t feel what they’re going through — a case this singular film makes by simply giving them control of part of the narrative.”