"I will likely be a member for life," says Christine Ha, describing how she relies on Learning Ally to access the printed word. Christine has been using accessible audiobooks while working towards a Masters in creative writing -- even while captivating millions of food-lovers and hearts around the world as the first blind competitor on the hit FOX television series,
MasterChef.
Editor's note: Originally published on August 2, 2012, this piece was updated on September 10. Read on and you'll understand why.
Christine Ha has taken contestants, judges and viewers by surprise as she continuously prepares visually appealing and, from what the judges tell us, incredibly good-tasting food on the FOX competition series,
MasterChef. Christine was chosen from about 30,000 people who auditioned for MasterChef with hopes of winning the title and $250,000 grand prize.
At age 33, Christine is a member of the Learning Ally family. We are proud to support her and wish her the best of luck on the show as she uses her keen senses of smell and taste to prepare meals for the competition each week. Learning Ally will also be supporting her for many years to come, as she explains, “I will likely be a member for life.
“When my vision decreased to the point where I could no longer read large print, I was depressed because I loved to read. Audiobooks were the only way for me to get my hunger for literature satiated. I found Learning Ally to have the most abundant library,” Christine says.
Tapping into Learning Ally’s library of more than 75,000 human-read audio textbooks and literature titles (rendered accessible for people with disabilities, the largest digital library of its kind in the world), Christine says she’s recently been listening to Becoming a Chef by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, and also Julia Child’s classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Christine is currently a Master of Fine Arts student in creative writing. “Obviously, this comes with a lot of reading assignments,” she says. “Learning Ally has been my main resource for obtaining audio versions of all the books I have to read for graduate school.”
Update 9/10/12: It looks like worldwide acclaim and great things are in store for Christine. She went all the way and won the Grand Prize at MasterChef, capturing a $250,000 prize, and a major cookbook publishing contract as well! You can watch video of her in action here.