By Elizabeth Slaughter

(Editor’s Note: Elizabeth Slaughter is an NFB of Minnesota member living in Bemidji. She can be contacted by telephone at (218) 755-1271 or e-mail at manutips@paulbunyan.net.)

I hold many things learned and experienced throughout my life to be critical to my education, independence, socialization, and financial security. Chief among them all is my learning and using braille.

Born congenitally blind, I was a very low partial and strained my eyes and shoulders through elementary school. When I entered high school, I was enrolled in the college preparatory program. I wanted to go to college, but had reservations about how I would manage the curriculum, since even more reading, writing and research would be required in college than in elementary and high school. I was enrolled in Sight-Saving, and blessed to have an insightful homeroom teacher who asked the braille division teacher if she would teach me braille.

I was so elated to attend braille instruction once or twice a week, and sailed through grades one and two braille in one semester!

As my vision deteriorated, I gradually moved from large print to braille, and by the time I graduated from high school, I was reading and writing braille exclusively.

I always enjoyed receiving birthday, Christmas and other greeting cards from family and friends, but usually disheartened and somewhat put-off, when my parents, siblings and friends had to read the very cards they gave me. The punch was taken out of their presentation, because I could not read the greeting and delight in the pictures on the cards.

After years of putting up with this secondhand method of giving and receiving greeting cards, I decided to do something about it. In April 1979, I established Slaughter Enterprises, and began producing braille-large-print greeting cards with braille graphics.

My goal was, and continues to be, to produce the most attractive, highest quality braille-large-print greeting cards anyone could ever hope to give or receive.

My Registered Trademark is MANUTIPS®, to emphasize the point that books, magazines, and even greeting cards are manually read with the fingertips!

Braille is my life. I enjoy using my computer, and use it daily, but the delight I have when called upon to quickly take down a phone number with slate and stylus, write a note on the Perkins Brailler, or relax in my rocker with a braille book or magazine far surpasses my love of computer, because braille opened the door to education, independence, socialization, and financial security, something no other means of communication could so aptly provide.