Inspiring blind student reads Braille with her lips

Hong Kong college student Tsang Tsz-Kwan, 20, is blind and severely hearing-impaired.

To learn Braille, Tsang had another obstacle to overcome: she lacks sensitivity in her fingertips.

Still, the determined student managed to master the tactile writing system — with her mouth.

Since Grade 1, Tsang has been using her lips — which are highly sensitive and can distinguish between points that are as little as one millimetre apart — to touch each page of Braille.

"In Primary 1 (the equivalent of Grade 1), I noticed that she was always leaning forward," said Mee-Lin Chiu, a teacher at the Ebenezer School & Home for the Visually Impaired — the only special needs school in Hong Kong dedicated to the blind. "She told me it was because she could read more clearly with her lips than her hands."

"I know it's not a common approach and it sounds rather strange. Even I myself don't know how it came about," Tsang told CNN.

In Grade 7, Tsang left Ebenezer School and enrolled in a mainstream secondary school.

"I have to facilitate my adaptation to society when I finish my studies and have to enter the workplace," she said.

"Without the courage to challenge myself, there is surely no possibility of success," she added.

While the transition to a mainstream school wasn't completely smooth — she had to send away all of her academic materials to be transcribed in Braille, and she struggled to keep up with reading and writing, speed-wise — Tsang now excels academically, scoring in the top 5 per cent in almost all of the subjects on her college entrance exams.

"I was really astonished and excited when I heard that my results in some of the subjects were far from my expectations," she said. "I felt my hard work this year has finally paid off."

Tsang even insisted she take the listening tests, even though her hearing impairment would have had her exempted from taking them.

"I was determined to take the listening tests as I should not look for excuses because of my handicap," she told the Standard. "Instead I must learn to be courageous to face challenges and I hope to encourage others with my experience."

She earned high marks in both the Chinese and English listening tests.

While Tsang isn't the first person to use their lips to read Braille, her case is a rare one.

Diane Wormsely, a professor at North Carolina Central University who specializes in education for the visually impaired, told CNN that Tsang is the first person she knows of who has been successful with lip-reading Braille.

"The inconveniences and limitations [my impairments] bring will follow me my whole life," Tsang told CNN. "I'm going to treasure what I still have."

Tsang hopes to study translation in the fall.