Tapping the piano keys and Bronwen Tagoe is able to produce a musical masterpiece.
not a single note of sheet music. Her only reference is her mind. It guides her fingers across the ivories to play, and across braille to read. "They went to put drops in her eyes and that's when we realized there was nothing there, it was tissue clear up to the eyelash line," describes Bronwen's mother, Deb Kersey-Tagoe, about the day Bronwen was born. At birth, Bronwen was diagnosed with a rare genetic mutation called Anophthalmia which means, no eyes. "I never looked at it as 'oh poor me' or 'oh poor her'; it made me breathe," says Deb. Over the years, Deb made it a point to describe everything to her daughter, but this was especially so when it came to clothing. "I would always describe her clothes, I always bought bows, bells, beads, velvet, always for identification purposes so she would have some kind of identification of her clothes," explains Deb. When Bronwen got older and more independent it became harder for her to recognize what she was putting on. "I had some shirts that were in print and I couldn't read them so she had to read them for me," says Bronwen. Deb knew there was a better way. "How about a shirt in my alphabet," Bronwen says as she remembers a conversation with her mom. "I thought it was a cool idea!"
And Braille-A-Wear was born. "My biggest seller to this day is don't touch my dots," says Deb as Bronwen reads the saying in Braille on a t-shirt. Braille-A-Wear offers shirts in a number of different sayings giving blind people clothing they can read and carrying out the message spelled out in the name. "Bringing awareness to blindness and braille," says Deb.
The product of a mother using her own eyes to help her daughter see.
