Miami University student honored for winning national Braille Challenge
The Inclusive Education major uses braille every day in her studies
Miami University student honored for winning national Braille Challenge
The Inclusive Education major uses braille every day in her studies
MaKenzie Love was honored by the Ohio legislature recently for being the first Ohioan to win the national Braille Challenge in 2025 as a high school senior.
Now a first-year student at Miami University, Love told lawmakers about the importance of Braille, a system of writing that uses characters made up of raised dots. She uses braille every day at Miami and has even read the “Harry Potter” series in Braille.
“Braille literacy is absolutely crucial to the lives of blind and visually impaired students. Over 90 percent of students that read braille are employed, but the startling statistic is that only 10 percent of blind people in the United States read Braille,” Love, of Commercial Point, told lawmakers on the floor of the Ohio House of Representatives in late March.
“We need to get out there as a nation and as a community, and as Ohioans especially, to encourage Braille literacy throughout the state and the nation.”
Love, who was born blind, is in Miami’s new Inclusive Education program. She wants to teach PK-5 students with visual impairments.
Ashley Cartell Johnson, clinical professor of Educational Psychology and coordinator of the Inclusive Education program, said, “The Inclusive Education major prepares teacher candidates to teach all learners, including students with disabilities and multilingual learners, in today's increasingly diverse classrooms. It is the first and only program in Ohio to offer a comprehensive and integrated major that leads to blended licensure in primary general education and K-12 special education (both mild/moderate and moderate/intensive licenses) and to an endorsement in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).”
Cartell Johnson described Love as a “dedicated and passionate inclusive education teacher candidate. We are confident that MaKenzie will shape, lead, and define the movement toward inclusive and accessible classrooms that support and honor all learners."
Love said she plans to attend graduate school after earning her bachelor’s degree.
‘I absolutely love it here’
Love, who made President’s List her first semester, said she’s having a great experience at Miami. “I absolutely love it here. I love the friends that I’ve made, and I have met so many wonderful people.”
She chose Miami because of the education program in the College of Education, Health, and Society.
“It really stuck out to me. I loved campus when I first came to visit,” she said, noting that she enjoys being in the Honors College and living in an honors residence hall on Western Campus.
Zeb Baker, dean of the Honors College, said Love is the embodiment of the ‘citizen scholars’ the Honors College has taken as its mission to produce — those who use their education to advance the common good.
“MaKenzie is the kind of student who reminds all of us who are fortunate to work with her why we entered this profession in the first place,” he said. “Her inexhaustible love of learning and bottomless energy to do as much good as she possibly can through that learning are an inspiration.”
Love appreciates having the Center for Student Disability Services and the AccessMU Center on campus for assistance when students need them. For her, that ranges from getting materials in Braille and tactile graphics, using assistive technology, to meeting with her professors in advance “so they know how best to serve me in class.”
She demonstrated how she uses the BrailleNote device (watch video below). She also uses Job Access with Speech (JAWS), a screen reader designed for blind and visually impaired users to navigate computers via text-to-speech or refreshable braille displays. It provides full access to applications, websites, and documents.
Love is able to get around campus without the aid of a guide dog. She walked from a class in Shideler Hall to the Armstrong Student Center’s Shade Room for this interview.
“I think the use of the white cane is absolutely crucial to mobility and to being able to get around,” she said. “It's so important to have those cane skills before you could contemplate getting a guide dog.”
Participating in cocurricular activities
Love sang the "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a Cleveland Guardians baseball game last July for Disability Awareness Celebration Night. Now she enjoys being a member of Miami’s Choraliers women’s vocal ensemble.
“It's a lot of fun. We get to do a lot of interesting repertoires and a very diverse amount of music,” she said. “And it's been great to establish relationships with other students that love to do the same thing as I do.”
Robyn Lana, director of the Choraliers, called Love a valuable addition to the choir.
“She works to learn movement and is open to the help of colleagues who are eager to assist because of her ability and desire to do well.”
While Love uses a Braille reader to learn lyrics, that isn’t available for the musical scores. Still, Lana said Love catches on very quickly.
Lana noted Love was a percussionist in high school and will be playing a cajon, a box-shaped Peruvian percussion instrument, during this Friday’s concert in Kumler Chapel.
“For this piece, she will ground the tempo for the entire choir,” Lana said.
Love also is involved with Navigators, a Christian ministry student organization on campus, and she is one of the co-founders of the Honors Spanish Tables for students who want to practice conversational Spanish in the Honors College.
She started Spanish Tables with Emma Grupe, resident director of Hillcrest Hall.
“MaKenzie and I were talking at the beginning of the year and I had mentioned that I was a Spanish major here at Miami,” said Grupe, who graduated in 2024 with a bachelor’s in Anthropology, Spanish, and Linguistics and a master’s in Spanish through the combined BA/MA program in Spanish.
“She speaks Spanish as well, so we started chatting in Spanish that day,” Grupe said. “We discussed the possibility of doing something with Spanish for the residents of the Honors Residential College, and Honors Spanish Tables were born.”
Grupe said Love is a wonderful co-host for the program. “She is such a caring individual, and it shows in her commitment to her community and the ideas she brings to better it. I’m so glad to have the opportunity to work with her in this regard.”
Winning the Braille Challenge
Love said it was gratifying to win last year’s three-day academic challenge testing students on five fundamental Braille literacy skills: reading comprehension, spelling, speed and accuracy, proofreading, and interpreting charts and graphs.
“It was amazing to see how much my work had paid off because I had practiced really hard,” she said.
She first won the Harley Fetterman Award for Excellence in Chart & Graphs, which she traditionally considered to be her weakest category. “I was very, very, very surprised and honored to win,” she said.
Love learned she won the varsity competition when her name was called.
“It was very surreal to hear it, but it was also very exciting to know that Ohio had been represented, and that my wonderful teachers and instructors in high school were there” watching online, she said.
Her teachers for the visually impaired “got me to that point,” said Love, who at age 5 became one of the first students to join the Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning Program through the National Federation of the Blind of Ohio. Love is still involved with the federation, which she called “a major part of my journey as a student.”
She hopes to pay it forward by working with young blind students.
“Braille exposure to individuals at a young age is very important,” she said, “and I think it's so important and crucial to emphasize the learning of braille and also to learn from blind adult role models as well."
Established in 1809, Miami University is located in Oxford, Ohio, with regional campuses in Hamilton and Middletown, a learning center in West Chester, and a European study center in Luxembourg. Interested in learning more about the College of Education, Health, and Society? Visit the website for more information.