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On October 21, 2005, the 74th National Schools for the Blind Speech Contest was held in the sports hall of the Aichi Prefectural Nagoya School for the Blind. This contest is organized by the National Association of Principals of Schools for the Blind, the Braille Mainichi, and the Mainichi Social Welfare Foundation. It was first held in 1928 and has taken place every year since then, apart from a temporary break during World War II.
“For people with visual impairments, talking is by far the most important component of communication,” says Tetsuo Mano, managing editor of the Braille Mainichi, Japan’s only weekly newspaper in Braille, which has a circulation of 12,000 copies. “This speech contest was begun with the aim of improving the oral communication capabilities of people with visual impairments. The contest also helps the public to better understand people with vision difficulties, because it gives them a platform for expressing their own thoughts to the rest of society.”
The Braille Mainichi was first published in 1922, and the speech contest was first held as part of the celebrations of the newspaper’s fifth anniversary. In 1925, Japan’s Universal Suffrage Law was enacted, and Braille ballots were permitted for the first time. “That’s probably when people with visual impairments first tried to make their voices heard,” supposes Mano.
There were sixteen participants in the first contest. At the time there were no preliminary rounds, but today, contestants are representatives who have won their way through pre - selection rounds in each of eight regions. This year’s contest had nine competitors, all having seven minutes each to deliver their impassioned speeches. |
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| The 74th National Schools for the Blind Speech Contest |
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