Chorded keyboard (a writing system for the blind) uses either 6 or 8 tactile 'points' from which all letters and numbers are formed. When Louis Braille invented it, it was produced with a needle holing successively all needed points in a cardboard sheet. In 1892, Frank Haven Hall, superintendent of the Illinois Institute for the Education of the Blind, created the Hall Braille Writer, which was like a typewriter with 6 keys, one for each dot in a braille cell. The Perkins Brailler, first manufactured in 1951, uses a 6-key chord keyboard (plus a spacebar) to produce braille output, and has been
News Writing (UIL contest) team competition in this event. However, the school with the best performance in the four journalism categories (Editorial Writing, Feature Writing, Headline Writing, and News Writing) is given a special team award. Students have 45 minutes to complete the contest; a time signal is given when 15 minutes remain. Students are given a prompt and they are to respond with a news story. Students are given the option of either handwriting the story or using a computer (a portable printer is required). The judging criteria are as follows: All papers are read and critiqued, with the top six papers ranked.