When Jim Cummings is sick, Winnie-the-Pooh disappears.

Cummings’ vocal cords give life to Disney’s animated Winnie-the-Pooh, the Bear of Very Little Brain created by A.A. Milne.

“Pooh is not quite a falsetto; he’s kind of like a high tenor, or a low tenor with a lot of rasp in there, just like a wind blowing through the cattails sort of sound,” the voice actor crooned in perfect Pooh timbre. “If I get an allergy or a cold, Pooh goes away, so I have to eat my vitamin C.

Pooh might suggest a remedy that soothes both the throat and tummy: honey.

Agoura Hills resident Cummings, 56, is a cartoon chameleon. He has been the voice of Pooh for Disney since 1988, then took over as Tigger.

Pooh and Tigger, however, are just two of the characters listed on Cummings’ 10-page “voiceography.”

You might have heard him as Kaa the snake in “The Jungle Book 2,” Ed the hyena in “The

Lion King” and assorted characters in “Aladdin,” “Antz,” Babe: Pig in the City,” “Bee Movie,” The Little Mermaid,” Pocahontas,” “Shrek” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

For Warner Bros., he’s Taz the Tasmanian devil (“the anti-Pooh,” he says). Other credits include “Animaniacs,” “Pinky and the Brain,” ”Curious George,” “King of the Hill,” “The Simpsons” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

And wildfire-prone California is proud to call him one of the voices of Smokey Bear.

“I do all the better bears,” said Cummings during an interview at his home.

Next up is his role as Ray, a laid-back, lovesick Cajun firefly in “The Princess and the Frog,” a new, traditionally 2-D animated Disney film set in New Orleans. The film, a musical, will have a score by Randy Newman and, in a first for Disney, a black princess. The movie, also featuring the voice of Oprah Winfrey (as the princess’ mom), is still in postproduction and scheduled for a December release.

This week, however, Cummings’ attention is on a certain boisterous tiger.

As the free-spirited Tigger on Disney Channel’s “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” which airs each morning, Cummings has received a 2009 Daytime Emmy Award nomination for outstanding performer in an animated program. The winner will be announced Saturday during the Creative Arts portion of the awards at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles; the more mainstream awards (such as honors for soap opera stars and talk show hosts, etc.) will be handed out Aug. 30 at L.A.’s Orpheum Theatre and televised on The CW.

Notice the Emmy category is titled “outstanding performer in an animated program,” not “outstanding voice.”

Cummings and his brethren truly are actors, not just script readers.

Brian Hohlfeld, executive director of “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” said that, to be a good voice actor, “you have to be an actor. People forget that. It’s not just the voice. There’s such a small group of people who do this because it’s really hard.”

With Cummings, he said, “you can see the physical changes in his face and body as he’s doing the voices.”

Cummings calls his work “acting for the ears.” Cartoons, he said, “are not called ‘animated’ for nothing.

“A lot of people think they draw the movie or cartoon first, but the fact is they record the voices first, then they animate to that,” he explained. “You can’t really draw comic timing out of thin air; you’ve got to hear it and go, ‘Oh, that I can draw.’”

Finding his voices

Cummings started out at the top of the cartoon chain, landing at animation exemplar Disney in the 1980s. Born and raised in Ohio, Cummings said he listened to Paul Winchell (the original voice of Tigger) and Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and many others) as a kid and thought, “Man, they’re having a great time.”

He didn’t have any formal stage or voice training, aside from a book about ventriloquism, but did act in plays as a child.

Onstage, he said, “I would rather be the wizard than the prince because the wizard was a little more interesting and had more cool stuff to do. I was doing accidental research for my career later in life.”

At age 19, after attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Cummings moved to the Big Easy. He worked as a deckhand on riverboats, and fulfilled his artsy side by designing and painting Mardi Gras floats, and performing as a drummer and singer in bands.

In 1979 Cummings, his first wife and their two daughters moved to California, where from 1979-84 he ran a video store in Anaheim Hills. While there, he made a demo voice tape, and was fortunate to get it into the right hands: a customer who was a movie producer.

“I got an audition out of that without an agent,” Cummings said.

He first real role was a plum Disney one, playing Lionel the Lion in “Dumbo’s Circus,” a TV show featuring live-action puppets.

Halfway through his 120-episode stint on “Dumbo’s Circus,” Cummings hired an agent and started working in radio and TV. (He also does voice-overs, movie trailers previews and commercials, everything from J.C. Penney to AutoZone.)

He moved from Anaheim to Westlake Village and the Santa Rosa Valley, then to Agoura Hills about three years ago. He and his wife Stephanie, who’ve been married for eight years, have two daughters, Gracie, 4, and Lulu, 2; Cummings’ older daughters are in their 20s.

Ducks and dust bunnies

Cummings is proud of some of his lesser-known roles, such as the title character in “Darkwing Duck,” an Emmy-nominated animated Disney program that aired in the early 1990s. Darkwing, “the terror that flaps in the night,” was a bumbling superhero in the town of St. Canard.

He’s also fond of a monster named Mr. Bumpy from “Bump in the Night.”

“He was this funky little guy who lived under the bed and thought eating dust bunnies was a delicacy,” Cummings said. “He was as cool as he could be, and ate dirty socks.”

In 1995, Cummings received an Annie Award nomination for voice acting as Mr. Bumpy but was beaten by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson.

The competition is stiff for this week’s Emmy Award, too, with celebs better known for their live-action work nominated in the animation category. Cummings is vying for the award with Amy Poehler (as Bessie Higgenbottom in “The Mighty B!” on Nickelodeon), Joan Rivers (Bubbe in “Arthur” on PBS), Vanessa Williams (Mama in “Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies” on PBS) and Jim Ward (Eyemore in “Biker Mice from Mars” on Fox).

“This year I’m going with either Vanessa or Amy,” Cummings said, summing up his competition. “I think folks go down the line and go: ‘Jim Cummings? I don’t really know who that is. Oh, Joan Rivers, Vanessa Williams, I love her; let’s vote for her.’ You can’t fight that. I understand why they do it.”

What does he think about the trend of celebrities taking on the lead voice roles in animated movies?

“I have some calls out to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Eddie Murphy,” Cummings said, laughing. “I said, ‘I won’t star in any blockbuster films if you stay out of animated films.’ They just won’t call me back.”

Cummings does get feedback, however, from another telephone venture, this one for charity.

Hundreds of sick children each year receive a phone call from one of the Hundred Acre Woods’ (and Agoura Hills’) famous denizens, Winnie-the-Pooh or Tigger, aka Cummings. He works with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses, and Famous Fone Friends, which connects sick kids to entertainers and athletes via phone.

Cummings recalled one such phone session with a little girl with cancer, not quite 3, who had been on chemotherapy for six months. “I had to gear up for that one,” he said. “‘I love you, Winnie-the-Pooh,’ she said. Stuff like that is so rewarding; it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

Keeping it fresh

Cummings models his Pooh and Tigger voices after the men who first voiced the characters: Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell, respectively.

(Holloway died in 1992. Winchell, a Moorpark resident when he died in 2005, lived in Ventura County for more than 15 years.)

“That’s one thing I think Disney is right on the money with — they keep their characters sounding the same,” Cummings said. “They could run a Winnie-the-Pooh from the ’60s and one from 2008 and have the consistency there.”

Still, he said, “you don’t want to stagnate. You ad lib and do different things to keep it fresh.”

“My Friends Tigger and Pooh” director Hohlfeld said Cummings is “true to Sterling vocally, but he’s made it his own as well. Pooh is still the befuddled bear. Jim just brings more heart to it; his Pooh has a little more warmth.”

One thing you might not want to hear, however, is Pooh as pugilist.

Cummings “does a fantastic Mike Tyson imitation,” Hohlfeld said. “Sometimes he’ll do Pooh’s lines using Mike Tyson’s voice.”

He doesn’t even need to alter Pooh’s “I am a Bear of Very Little Brain” line.

Jim Cummings holds daughters Grace, 4, and Lulu, 2, near a garden statue of Taz the Tazmanian devil — he calls him “the anti-Pooh” — for which he also provides the voice.

In his 25 years being often heard and seldom seen, Jim Cummings has voiced a host of characters and won many honors. He’s up for a possible Daytime Emmy this year as outstanding performer for his work as Tigger’s voice.

Jim Cummings, a voice actor who´s done numerous animated characters since 1984, carries his daughter Lulu 2, out of their Curious George playhouse July 23, 2009.

Voice actor Jim Cummings rehearses a current project in his home studio in Agoura Hills. He’s been the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh for Disney since 1988 and does Tigger, too.

“It’s a tough job,” says the recognizable voice from the other end of the phone, “and somebody’s got to do it! It might as well be me. Hoo Hoo!”

To 40 years of fans the bouncy bravado can come from one of A.A. Milne’s most beloved creations, Tigger. The spring-tailed super-feline has been charming the socks off of kids since he exploded on the big screen in the Oscar-winning Disney short “Winnie The Pooh & The Blustery Day” back in 1968.

Of course, in those days, Pooh and Tigger were voiced by two legends in the acting field, Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell, respectively. Holloway passed away decades ago while Winchell left this plane in 2005.

So who is the voice on the other end of the line? Why the man who replaced both of them, a man who is not exactly considered a lightweight in the voice world either, Jim Cummings.

“I feel pretty honored to be walking in their footsteps,” says Cummings, back in his natural voice. “I honestly feel I’m the torchbearer for the trail they blazed. One thing I’ve learned is a generation, when you talk in terms of Winnie The Pooh and Tigger, is only about three years. After that amount of time, the last batch has grown to more mature things and you have a whole new batch of sweetie pies out there all enamored with Winnie The Pooh. I’ve got some of my own, so I know what it’s like.”

Indeed, Cummings does. He started in animation in the mid-80s, quickly picking up work on Transformers (Afterburner), Duck Tales (El Capitan) and Chip’n Dale’s Rescue Rangers (Monterey Jack).  His incredible range and versatility was noted by no less than Mel Blanc, who was quoted as telling the industry to look out for Cummings.

“This guy’s really got something,” Blanc said, a line Cummings likes to use a lot these days. Who can blame him?

His real breakthrough into lead work came in 1988, when he did his first job as Pooh in Winnie The Pooh Friend-ship: Tigger-ific Tales. As intimated before, Holloway was long gone from this planet, but Paul Winchell was still Tigger at that time. Cummings would first step into the role of Tigger in 1996 with a Pooh Halloween special entitled Boo To You, Too. Things started to get interesting after that.

“I absolutely did know Paul,” says Cummings. “I knew him well during the last years of his life, when he was going back and forth from South Africa, doing research. He was really like Da Vinci. He designed one of the prototypes for one of the first artificial hearts. He was also going back and forth to Africa to try and solve some of the hunger problems there. In fact, how I got the role of Tigger is initially when he would go I would pinch hit for him.”

Indeed. In 1998, on A Winnie The Pooh Thanksgiving special, both Cummings and Winchell are credited on the role of the terrific tiger. By 1999, it was handed over completely to Cummings with The Tigger Movie. From that point on, Cummings would voice both Pooh and Tigger. There’s some controversy over the transition. Rumors said Winchell didn’t take losing the job too well, apparently. Cummings has his own point of view.

“What actually happened is they decided to recast the entire cast,” he says. “They then did some tests and I came in first as Pooh and second on Tigger. Now when Paul was around, he was certainly Tigger. Then in 1999 he apparently decided to retire and I’ve been the voices of Tigger and Pooh since then, full time.”

If you want to see just how stellar Cummings’ work (with or without Winchell) truly is, you’d find no better example than the just re-released, 10th Anniversary edition of The Tigger Movie.

Originally released in 2000, the film revolves around Tigger realizing he really is, as his song about himself declares, “the only one” of his kind. As far as he knows, he has no family, no family tree. This sets him on a quest that is probably one of the darkest in the Pooh universe, actually putting the characters in the equivalent of life-threatening situations.

Of course, it gets resolved; it’s a Pooh movie after all. Still, with songs from the legendary Sherman Brothers, solid directing and screenplay by Jun Falkenstein and a voice cast that includes the likes of the late John Fiedler (Piglet), Peter Cullen (Eeyore) and John Hurt (Narrator), it stands as one of the best of the post-60s Pooh films made.

Another reason, obviously, is Cummings work on both Tigger and Pooh. The DVD includes some earlier Pooh projects; ones where Winchell and Cummings worked together. The amazing thing is Cummings’ Tigger is almost indistinguishable from Winchell’s. Then again, it seems Cummings has created a solid routine about both these characters.

“Actually, I would do Winnie first,” says Cummings. “Then I would bounce over to do my Tigger chores. Pooh is a little bit easier to do. He’s a little higher in register, which is another reason why I address him first. Actually, the voice of Pooh comes from a different spot in the instrument than Tigger.

“Then again, I think it’s important to keep the performances pristine. I don’t want any spillover. I’m one of those guys who doesn’t take himself very seriously, but I do take my work very seriously. As a result I try to put out the best that I can because–My gosh!–they go out and stay out there forever.”

Apparently this kind of work habits have truly paid off for Cummings. If you look under his name on the IMDB, he is listed in over 300 different animation projects.

“I don’t know who at the IMDB puts all that I’ve done on there, but bless their hearts because I wouldn’t have done it,” Cummings says with tongue firmly planted in cheek. “Then again, I’m glad someone did. What can I tell you? It was the stuff that used to get me kicked out of class. The joke’s on them now. The dog barking in the back of the room was always me. Now I get paid to do Tigger.”

In fact, he’s still being paid to do Tigger, and that willy nilly silly old honey loving bear, Pooh, too. During the interview he also did a mean version of Eeyore (although one gets the impression Peter Cullen’s job is safe in that department). His more recent work in that arena was a TV movie entitled Tigger & Pooh and a Musical Too, and before that a Disney CGI series entitled My Friends Tigger & Pooh. In between he’s appeared in everything from Star Wars Clone Wars (Hondo) to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (Pete), subbed for Dustin Hoffman on The Secrets of the Furious Five D2D and will be in the upcoming Disney feature film The Princess and the Frog.

In other words, we shouldn’t be surprised if, at this rate, he is rapidly approaching his 500th or so job.

“…Well, someone’s gotta do it!” Cummings again says in his Tigger voice…and it feels right when he says it, too.

Talking to Jim Cummings is like being in a reverse “Enchanted” — you feel like a real person who somehow has stepped into an animated world.

Mr. Cummings has been a voice actor for a quarter-century, playing some of animation’s best-known characters. He just received a Daytime Emmy nod for his work as the gregarious Tigger on Disney Channel’s “My Friends Tigger and Pooh” — he also voices Pooh. He was Darkwing Duck on the series of the same name and has appeared in films from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” to “Shrek.” In “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” his voice brought a number of characters to life, including Abe Lincoln. In this fall’s highly anticipated “The Princess and the Frog,” he voices a “lovesick Cajun firefly,” as Disney describes his sidekick role. He does movie trailers, commercials and video games.

The genial Mr. Cummings sounds like a man who loves what he does. But how does one get into such a distinctive line of work?

“You start by getting kicked out of class a lot when you’re in grade school. You’re back there doing dolphin noises in the back of the room,” he says. “Sister Mary Agnes knows who that is. Next thing you know, you’re out in the hall.”

He loved cartoons as a child. “I was the guy watching and thinking to myself, ‘This Mel Blanc guy sounds like he’s having a pretty good time. It usually gets me in trouble when I act like that,’ ” he says. “I always knew as a kid I’d be doing something like that. I knew I wouldn’t have a time clock in my future.”

He did at first, though. As he says, “You gotta eat.”

Born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, he started in a steel mill as soon as he graduated high school. “It must have been three in the morning; I was walking down with snow up to my thighs, and it was 20 below. It was as if God was saying, ‘What do you want, me to drop a piano on your head? Get out of here.’ ”

So he hoofed it to New Orleans, where he created Mardi Gras floats and worked as a riverboat deckhand. It was the perfect place for a voice actor and musician. “It was where I heard so many accents,” he says. “I just treated it as fertile ground for the imagination, accidental research. You put all that together, and you get something new. Besides, if you do a terrible impression of somebody, you get a brand-new character.”

He finally made his way to California, where his very first demo tape made it into the hands of his idol. “It was the sweetest thing,” he recalls of having a friend who shared an office building with the late Mr. Blanc play the tape for him. “He looked up at the ceiling, shut his eyes, and smiled. At the end of the tape, he said, ‘Tell the kid he’s got it.’ I wasn’t there, but I’ll never forget that one.”

He’s been working steadily ever since.

If you’ve seen anything in animation, chances are you’ve heard Mr. Cumming’s voice — even when you think it’s someone else’s.

“I jokingly refer to myself as a stunt singer,” he says. “A lot of great actors don’t sing, and I’m a pretty good singer and a pretty good mimic, and I put those two together and sing in character for them.” He’s sung for Ed Asner, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd. When Jeremy Irons’ voice gave out while recording “The Lion King,” Mr. Cummings filled in for him — seamlessly.

He gets to combine his love of music and acting again in “The Princess and the Frog.” It sounds as if the Cajun character Ray was pretty easy for Mr. Cummings to create, having lived in New Orleans for most of the 1970s.

“Randy Newman, the poet laureate of New Orleans, he’s doing the music. It’s set in the jazz age. It’s so up my alley, I can’t even begin to tell you. I’m a jazz guy,” he says. “I’ve been singing my whole life. You combine that with Cajun culture, my favorite city, the first African-American princess in a Disney movie ….” He really knew he had to get the part, though, when he realized his children would be watching the DVD for years to come. He reportedly beat Harry Connick Jr. for the role.

That the film features Disney’s first black princess has put the movie under intense scrutiny – the heroine’s name was changed when critics thought “Maddy,” short for Madeleine, was too close to “Mammy.”

“Some people are in the business of taking themselves too seriously,” Mr. Cummings comments. “It pushes us apart; it doesn’t draw us together.”

Incredibly, one columnist even called Disney insensitive for setting the story in New Orleans, “the setting of one of the most devastating tragedies to beset a black community.”

“Can you believe that?” Mr. Cummings says. “Where would you set a movie that was the birthplace of jazz if it wasn’t going to be in New Orleans? My hometown of Youngstown would have volunteered, but it just wouldn’t be the same.”

Mr. Cummings has played many memorable roles, but his favorites have been the musical ones — he loved playing King Louie. “Speaking of New Orleans jazz, Louis Prima was the original,” he says of the great who first voiced the character in “The Jungle Book.” He also loved doing Don Karnage of “TaleSpin,” “the first Monty Python character in a Disney cartoon” and Darkwing Duck.

He’s enjoying playing Tigger and Pooh, too. “Pooh is kind of the eye of the storm, and Tigger is the storm, so I can keep them separate that way,” he says. “It’s just an honor to me; I feel like I’m a torchbearer for a new generation of kids.”

His own younger daughters, 4 and 2, love it — though his older daughters, 27 and 22, weren’t always his biggest fans. “I remember when the oldest was 5, I was reading voices, and she’d say, ‘Dad, it’s getting late; don’t do the voices, just read.’ ‘That’ll put you through college, missy!’ ” he’d respond.

It isn’t just his own children he talks to in character. One of the joys of the job is getting on the telephone as Tigger or Pooh a few times a week. “I can call up little kids in the hospital over Christmas or their birthdays if they’re ill and put a smile on their faces and make their mom and dad happy again,” he says.

Mr. Cummings has seen a lot of changes in the industry. There’s one that affects him more than any other.

“A lot of big-time celebrity movie stars are throwing their hats into the ring, that’s for sure,” he says. Case in point: Three of the five nominees in his Daytime Emmy category are Hollywood heavies — Amy Poehler, Joan Rivers and Vanessa Williams. Mr. Cummings has a simple solution to the problem plaguing him and his colleagues. “I’ll make a deal with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. If they don’t do any cartoons, I promise I won’t be the lead in any blockbuster films. Is that too much to ask for?”

Voice actor Jim Cummings has lent his voice to everyone from Winnie the Pooh to the Tasmanian Devil. His Imdb.com credits look like the ultimate animated character wish list. For The Clone Wars series airing on Cartoon Network, Cummings voices the Weequay pirate chief Hondo Ohnaka in the “Dooku Captured” story arc. StarWars.com chats with Cummings about his work on the new TV series, his preparation for his role, and how he snuck in a little tribute to Yul Brynner.

When you auditioned for the role of Hondo Ohnaka in The Clone Wars, how did you go about creating a voice for a brand new character?

You’re trying to voice it as something familiar but also exotically different. You know that the characters can’t sound like they’re from Omaha. I was trying to do almost a bad Yul Brynner. When you go in for an audition, they give you a basic age range, personality traits and background information of the character. He’s a pirate with a heart of gold. He’ll steal from you but he won’t break your legs while he does it. That kind of thing.

How did you prepare for this role once you got it?

You go in with a good idea of who the character is. He’s more of a lovable rogue than a cruel mercenary. His background also develops as you go along and get to know the guy. Certain things work and others don’t as the show progresses. His story is written as it unfolds in some way. It’s also nice to have the whole cast of voice actors there in the same room, which is great because you’re ping-ponging dialog and playing off each other to elevate the scene. You’re not acting in a vacuum. I’ve done so many other projects where you’re in a room with a reader and you’re acting your lines out (Cummings says in a booming voice): “We have to get out of here! Any minute the building will explode!” And then the reader says (Cummings says in a bored, stilted voice): “Yes…we have to get… out of here.” So it’s not easy to be in the moment in that kind of situation. Reading with the entire cast in the room for The Clone Wars makes the experience much more organic and I love that.

As a voice actor, what are the specific challenges that differ from being an on-camera actor?

It’s great when truly gifted animators appreciate the voice actors, and the voice actors appreciate the animators. I do very little on-camera acting, so within a phrase as a voice actor you have to know how to convey when someone is 95 years old or 19 years old. Are they tired? Are they dying of thirst? All that has to be in your voice. When I was the lead singer of the California Raisins commercials there was a traditional actor there as well and he would do all these body movements without saying anything because he was “acting.” And the only acting the microphone picked up on was silence.

You’ve done many voices for a lot of amazing franchises like Pokemon, The Little Mermaid, Teen Titans, Winnie the Pooh, The Boondocks, and many more. Aside from Hondo Ohnaka, who is your favorite character to voice?

I have a brand new favorite for a Disney animated feature coming out next Christmas called The Princess and the Frog. I’m Ray the singing Cajun firefly. New Orleans is my second hometown. I was a deckhand on a riverboat there when I was 18, so I have that Cajun accent down pat. Ray is a lovesick firefly who’s near-sighted and falls in love with the Evening Star. Of course, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger will always be favorites of mine too.

As a dad, do you often find yourself at the dinner table doing voices to entertain your kids and their friends?

I have four daughters, with the two youngest being four years old and a year and a half. When one of my older daughters was in sixth grade, a classmate brought in their talking Winnie the Pooh doll for show and tell, so the next week my daughter one upped her classmates and brought me to school in for show and tell. Now I have that all over again with my younger daughters with The Princess and the Frog.

You were the narrator in Mark Hamill’s Comic Book: The Movie; how did you get involved in that project?

I ended up doing a narration because Mark wanted the wacky Sterling Holloway scientist voice from the ’50s Superman. I also got to play a jerk on camera as well. He knew I collected comic books and he came to me to be in the movie. You never know who is going to be one of us — in this secret society of voice actors. I was so excited to work with him in the early ’90s on Taz-Mania. He’s a great guy. It was cool to have Mark ask me to do all these voices for him like he was a fan. I was like, “You’re not meeting me, I’m meeting you.”

Why do you think fans will like the new Clone Wars TV show?

The show has a fantastic story and it’s a pleasure for the eyes and ears. It carries forth everything you love about the franchise and about the characters. Little things pop up about the characters in Star Wars saga overall. It’s that multi-layered history that we all love to delve into as fans.

For more information about the Braille Challenge, you can visit it’s page at the Braille Institute here.

Here is the original press release for this event:

Putting Their Braille Skills to the Test: Nation’s Top Blind Students Compete in Unique Academic Competition

The top blind and visually impaired students from across the U.S. and Canada meet in Los Angeles to compete in the 9th Annual Braille Challenge Competition.

LOS ANGELES, CA UNITED STATES

LOS ANGELES, June 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On Saturday, June 20, the top blind students from across the United States and Canada put their knowledge of the braille code to the test in the only national academic competition for blind students in the country — The National Braille Challenge(R).

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090620/DC35722 )

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090618/BILOGO )

Sponsored by Braille Institute of America(R), the competition serves to encourage blind children of all ages to fine-tune their braille skills, which are essential to their success in the sighted world. The 9th Annual National Braille Challenge(R) took place on Saturday, June 20, from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Braille Institute’s headquarters, located at 741 North Vermont Avenue, in Los Angeles. The participants, ages 6 to 19, competed in challenging categories that required them to transcribe, type and read braille using a device called a Perkins Brailler. Each category was designed to test their braille skills in several areas–reading comprehension, braille spelling, chart and graph reading, proofreading and braille speed and accuracy–all of which they need to master in order to keep up with their sighted peers.

“We know that employment numbers for blind people are significantly lower than those of sighted people in the same age group,” said Nancy Niebrugge, director of the Braille Challenge(R). “But 90 percent of blind people who are gainfully employed are braille readers, and that’s very telling. It’s essential that blind children learn to read braille at an early age.”

This year’s competition featured a diverse group of high achievers — from athletes to musicians to junior activists. Most were born blind, others lost their sight due to cancer or viral infections, but they all share a tenacity that drives them to succeed in spite of their disability. They are the top 60, chosen from among more than 650 students throughout the country during a round of preliminary testing. Following the competition an awards ceremony will be held at the Universal Hilton Hotel, from 6 to 9 p.m. The first- through third-place winners in each age group will receive a savings bond, ranging in value from $500 for the youngest group to $5,000 for the oldest. Legendary voice-over actor Jim Cummings, who has lent his voice to characters such as Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, will present the awards. In addition to these prizes, Freedom Scientific has donated the latest in adaptive equipment for the winners — a pocket PC with a braille display called a PacMate, valued at nearly $4000. KNBC4-TV will also sponsor the Braille Superstar Award for Excellence in Reading Comprehension. Although the stakes are high, The National Braille Challenge(R) serves to bridge the gap between a unique group of students from across the country.

“The great thing about The Braille Challenge(R), is that it gives us the opportunity to celebrate braille literacy in a unique way,” said Niebrugge. Most of the participants are the only blind students in their school. They go through their entire lives being the exception. This competition gives them the opportunity to build camaraderie among kids who have shared similar life experiences.”

If you would like additional information on the National Braille Challenge(R), please contact Courtney Goines, director of Marketing and PR, at (323) 663-1111, Ext. 3176. The Braille Challenge(R) Finals Competition was made possible in part through the generosity of Freedom Scientific, Walter Lantz Foundation, dot.dat.inc, Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg, and Dot and Rick Nelson.

SOURCE Braille Institute of America