Cooper Alexander

Although his mom, Mary, says he was born "tiny but perfect" at just 27 weeks, Cooper Alexander's life would change forever when meningitis led to blindness and cerebral palsy just a month later. The diagnoses hit the close-knit Alexander family hard. But, in traditional fashion, they pulled together and worked with aides and therapists to help Cooper be very independent and happy.

Despite his hard work, Cooper was forced to confront his disabilities when, in third grade, he was excluded from a much-anticipated school field trip to the local lake because he couldn't read braille fast enough to meet the requirements of an Accelerated Reading Challenge. "It was like I couldn't do things all by myself," recalls Cooper, a highly intelligent and inquisitive 10 year old.

It wasn't until Cooper's mom learned about RFB&D and became involved with our Texas Unit that her son would finally get the reading help he needed. After becoming a member of RFB&D, Cooper says, "I was excited, I mean really excited. I knew that from now on, my life would be totally different."

The results were immediate. It took Cooper just two days to read his first book, take his first test and receive a perfect score. Now, according to his parents, Cooper is happily independent and able to read on his own; and he has become a classroom leader, confident that there is no barrier he cannot overcome with the right tools. In September, RFB&D's audio textbooks helped Cooper learn about space and prepare for a long-awaited visit to Space Camp in Alabama. He now dreams of becoming an astronaut or "future president of RFB&D." Perhaps most significantly, Cooper met the Accelerated Reading Challenge last year and joyfully joined his fellow classmates on that trip to the lake.

Nick Esposito

On a fall day in 1997, Nick Esposito, a sophomore at Pace University in New York, suddenly saw a cloudy black spot in his vision and struggled to see whether traffic lights were red or green. He didn't know it at the time, but that would be the last day Nick would drive his car and attend class as a sighted person. When told of Nick's impending blindness, his dad recalls "feeling as if somebody reached into my chest and ripped my heart right out."

Diagnosed with a rare genetic condition known as Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, Nick left college and spent the next two years learning how to remain independent. Above all, Nick aspired to continue his studies at Pace and fulfill his dream of becoming a teacher. "I longed to push my way through the clouds to the light of knowledge that awaited me," he says.

Introduced to RFB&D by a rehabilitation counselor, Nick, along with his guide dog, Guthrie, returned to Pace in 1999 - a moment he describes as a "rebirth." Nick credits RFB&D's accessible textbooks with maintaining his independence and saving him the hundreds of hours he would have spent with live readers.

Today, Nick is living his dream in Bronx, NY, as a teacher at the High School for Teaching and the Professions and part time instructor at Lehman College, where he earned his master's degree. He balances his work life with another passion he's had since he was a child - baseball. Nick plays "beep" baseball (an adapted version of the game for people with visual impairments) with the Long Island Bombers, often taking on sighted teams and playing for area fundraising events. "Beep baseball allows me to play baseball, just differently," says Nick. "Just like RFB&D helps me read and learn - simply in a different way."

Tracy Johnson

Tracy Johnson recalls that being transferred to special education classes in the sixth grade was "truly one of the worst experiences of my life." In addition to being teased and called stupid by her peers, a teacher told her she would never go to college and a counselor said she could never succeed. "This is not happening," Tracy recalls thinking. "They can't continue to label me."

After being denied admission to a local college because of her poor reading skills, Tracy began to believe those negative labels. "I felt like all my hopes and dreams were, literally, being destroyed," she says. Tracy all but gave up on her dreams of a college education as she stretched what was supposed to be a temporary janitorial position into many years of cleaning classrooms for the Philadelphia School District.

Ironically, thanks to teachers and mentors she met in the school district, Tracy was encouraged to give higher education another try. It was only then that she was diagnosed with dyslexia, which finally explained her earlier struggles. Once introduced to RFB&D's recorded textbooks, Tracy excelled in school and graduated from Harcum College in Bryn Mawr, PA. She is now attending Cabrini College, which recently honored her with a service and leadership award, to pursue her dream of becoming a psychologist.

Tracy says RFB&D helped her transform from a young woman cleaning classrooms to a college student with confidence and unlimited potential. She exclaims, "RFB&D opened a whole new insight for me where my life will never be the same. Because of RFB&D, my dreams are now a reality!" And to the teachers who told her she would never make it to college, Tracy has just one message: "I proved you wrong ... and RFB&D proved you wrong."