By Laura Hipshire
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
“How many people do you know who spend almost two years learning something just to volunteer?” asks Ed Handley, referring to his wife, Shirley.
Ed and Shirley Handley moved from Overland Park, Kan., to Erickson’s Fox Run community in Novi, Mich. Shirley Handley brings words to life for the visually impaired—she’s been a certified braille transcriber since the early 1980s. During this time, she has transcribed more than 15,500 pages of written words into braille.
Passion for transcribing
Erickson communities, like Tallgrass Creek in Overland Park, are home to many people who use their skills and talents to make the lives of others better and more productive. Handley found her passion for transcribing in Overland Park, and has continued to build on it at Fox Run. She has taken her past experiences and woven them into a vital and productive present.
Handley became involved with braille when her youngest child left for college. “I was looking for something to do,” she says.
To become certified, Handley had to complete a course that took almost two years. The final “test” comes in the form of completing a 35-page book manuscript, which is sent for review to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
When Handley first began transcribing, she used an old-fashioned cast-iron Perkins braillewriter. Similar to a modified typewriter, a brailler has a keyboard of six keys, each representing a dot within a braille cell.
According to the American Council of the Blind, “A blind 11-year-old boy took a secret code devised for the military and saw in it as the basis for written communication for blind individuals. Louis Braille spent nine years developing and refining the system of raised dots that has come to be known by his name.”