On May 16, 2018 the Polish qualifying round of the International Braille Contest 2018 for the Visegrad blind community took place in Poznań. Three finalists from Poland qualified for the international final of the competition.

Competitors taking part in the Polish round of the contest were fluent in Braille using comparable hardware devices BraillePen / EasyLink 12 Touch (or other 12-24-character Braille display) and iPod / iPhone.

Participants competed in four disciplines using the iPod / iPhone note editor and e-mail application:

1. a) reading (reading aloud a short fragment of text in their language),
   

2. b) dictation (writing a short fragment of text containing 300 characters),
   

3. c) editing (arranging 16 randomly mixed lines of poetic text),
   

4. d) sharing (sending the results, dictating and editing) to the main jury computer.
   

The first place was taken by a participant from Bielsko-Biała, Małgorzata Wiecha with 478 points, a second participant from Poznań, Jacek Kaczmarek with 469 points, third participant from Szwecja near Wałcz, Aneta Pińkowska with 415 points, fourth participant from Poznań, Mariusz Koczorowski 410 points and fifth place Maciej Kapczyński from Płock with the number of 408 points.

Polish participants during the talks with the organizer of the contest agreed that such competitions promoting Braille is still not enough.

Braille has been serving people with blindness for many years. Thanks to the ability to use it, the blind can read fluently, write correctly, and most importantly learn and discover the secrets of spelling, immerse themselves in the correct Polish language.

The plate and the chisel are unfortunately forgotten. Big Braille volumes in our homes are rare, and there is far to Braille libraries.

The finalists of Polish competition said:

“We read a lot of books in the form of sound. This is a good solution which the blind people praise them too, but from time to time it is worth having something under your fingers, so that you can write correctly - firstly, and secondly to feel the taste of fluent reading, and thirdly to cope with the acquisition of languages, etc. Therefore, the idea to bring blind people to information technology, encourage the use of Braille monitors, and thus delight Braille still the same, but otherwise given - we consider for a medal.”