Photo by discarted

Talented writer Heather Murphy wrote this story for the NPR site about the Braille Challenge, an annual contest here in Los Angeles for supersmart blind and visually impaired students who come from all over the country to test their skills in areas like spelling, reading and proofreading.

With an accompanying video by Amir Noori and photos by Shawn Nee (discarted), it’s a multifacted multimedia story — and worth checking out, if I do say so.

Shawn says he was impressed and humbled by the kids he met at that day, noting their self-awareness and complete confidence and “how they were constantly reminding themselves and the people around them that, yes, they’re blind so quit walking on egg shells and just publicly acknowledge it and get comfortable with it because they sure are.”

Read and watch the story here.