Learning Braille took a lot of persistence and perseverance, though it also felt natural to now 22-year-old Mason Fessenden of Dana Point.
When Mason was born premature and completely blind, his mother, Martha Fessenden, said she was told he would never be able to learn Braille.
“We were told he was never going to talk; he was going to have cerebral palsy,” Martha recalled. “He is a blessing, he’s an inspiration. Not a bad bone in his body.”
The trickiest part of learning Braille, Mason said, was managing to keep both hands on the page. After learning Braille, Mason even taught his parents how to read it.
“It is very difficult,” Martha said. “Because you learn the alphabet, but then you learn—it’s called grade 2—and they put the symbols together to make words. ‘CH’ is one symbol and ‘AD.’ It gets very difficult.”
Braille comprises a six-dot combination to represent letters and numbers, Mason explained.
In high school, Mason started converting restaurants’ menus to Braille as part of a community service project.
“I wanted this to be more of an involvement for me Brailling out menus, because every single time I’d go to restaurants, I would often get responses that ‘No, we don’t have a Braille menu. We don’t have a company to work with to provide it,’ ” Mason said.
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act National Network, if businesses cannot provide Braille menus and sales tags, they must have a waiter or sales associate available to read menus or sales tags to those with visual impairments.
“As a blind consumer of products and services of different businesses, I feel like I’m having to ask for help and rely upon my folks and other sighted folks around me,” Mason said. “So, what I want to do is bridge the gap to where blind people can have equal access, in Braille, to those materials.”
What started as a high school project to close the accessibility gap between businesses and the blind community launched Clarity Menus and More, a business aiming to provide Braille menus.
“It’s kind of been a little slow, but I’ve managed to keep it up to par, and I’m starting to get my own equipment for it so I can feel good about it and be able to Braille menus and get back on track with that,” Mason said.
The first menu that Mason converted to Braille was Rudy’s Mexican Food in Monrovia, California.
When looking to convert a menu to Braille, Mason will first either get a copy of the menu from the restaurant or use an online version, if available. If there’s no accessible online copy, Mason’s brother Logan or mother read the menus aloud.
“His little brother used to read menus to him, go through and read them as he Brailled them out,” Martha said. “Now, they come in PDF forms and stuff, so it’s a little better.”
The process of Brailling menus with Logan brought the brothers closer together, Mason said.
“I call him my little eyeballs, because he’s the second pair of eyes that I don’t have,” Mason said.
When Brailling Rudy’s menu, Mason spent hours with Logan reading the menu aloud and then working to properly format the Braille.
“You never really think about that when you’re reading through a menu, how extensive it is,” Martha said, adding that Rudy’s menu was “so big.”
Since moving to Orange County, Mason has Brailled a menu for Trevor’s at the Tracks in San Juan Capistrano and Proud Mary’s in Dana Point.
“These are all a combination of dots, so each dot represents a letter. So ‘D,’ for instance, in this column right here where my finger is, ‘D’ is the dot 1, 4, 5,” Mason said, tracing his hands along a dotted page—the note he sent Steve Zdrakas, co-owner of Proud Mary’s.
Mason included a thank you note along with the Brailled menu he created for the restaurant: “Dear Proud Mary’s Team, I’m writing to simply say thank you for the wonderful graduation gift and thank you for supporting me throughout my journey. You all deserve recognition and thanks for all you do for the community.”
Since moving to Dana Point, Mason and Martha frequented Proud Mary’s for breakfast and got to know Zdrakas.
When Mason graduated from high school, Zdrakas gave him a $100 check to support Mason.
“Mason’s been coming here for the last couple of years,” Zdrakas said. “He graduated high school about a year ago, and I wrote him out a check for $100, and they were so surprised.”
In return, Mason asked Zdrakas for a copy of Proud Mary’s menu. Four months later, Mason returned with a Braille copy of the menu.
“I said, ‘Oh, man, it’s beautiful,’ ” Zdrakas said. “He’s such a kind and nice young man.”
Zdrakas added that it feels good to be able to offer a Braille menu to sight-impaired customers.
“I don’t think too many people have that,” Zdrakas said.
Now, Mason has Brailled 12 menus, and counting. These days, Mason uses software tied to an embosser to create the Braille menus.
Martha added that it’s important for people to know that accessible menus are available at the restaurants that Mason’s helped.
In addition to Proud Mary’s and Trevor’s at the Tracks, Mason has Brailled menus at Bella Sera Trattoria, The Diplomat Eatery and Tavern, Basin 141 Social Bar & Kitchen and Cafe Mundial (the latter four in Monrovia), as well as Arcadia restaurants including The Derby, Paco’s Mexican Restaurant and Zelo Pizza.
His Brailled menus can also be found at State Fare Bar & Kitchen, a gastropub in Catonsville, and at the Baci Café and Wine Bar in Healdsburg.
Occasionally, Mason will get contacted by a sight-impaired individual who’s come across one of his menus.
“It feels good,” Mason said. “It makes me feel great as an entrepreneurial businessman to actually help somebody.”
Mason added that he wants to provide sight-impaired people with the same experiences as seeing people.
“I don’t want it to just be all, people come, and they don’t get a menu; I want people to experience it where they can get their hands on it,” Mason said.
Mason added that he’s looking forward to approaching more restaurants that he frequents in Orange County.
Looking to scale up the business, Martha noted that the family is setting Mason up with a home office, where he’ll be able to keep converting menus.
Mason added that he hopes Clarity Menus can introduce more seeing individuals to Braille.
“I hope to help the blind have a voice, because blind people are not represented very highly in terms of advocacy, in terms of employment, in terms of even just services alone,” Mason said. “Even for this, Brailling menus so that they can … be more independent.”
“Another takeaway,” Mason continued, “is blind people can do anything that sighted people can do, with, of course … more accommodations.”