Jessica Lauser was born blind. Suffering from retinopathy due to being born four months prematurely, Lauser’s one eye is completely blind, and the other eye only has 20/480 eyesight, which means that she has very little to no depth perception.
Lauser knew that she would be bullied because of her poor eyesight, so she looked for a way to silence the bullies, and she found that way when she was seven years old. That way was through chess.
"I knew that the kids were going to call me 'four eyes,' and I said, 'Hey, maybe if I beat them, then they will finally shut up,'" Lauser said.
It became more than a way of silencing the bullies.
"When I saw that a child could beat an adult in this game, (I knew) there was obviously something special and different about this chess. It meant that it wasn't something that depended on the fact that somebody was stronger than someone else or that they had to see like everyone else. There was something special about (the game) that made me want to learn more."
As an adult, she found comfort in playing chess on the streets of Washington, DC, San Francisco and San Jose.
Today, Jessica Lauser has dozens of major accolades in chess. She is a three-time US blind chess champion. Lauser aims to be a chess master in the future.
More about her story over at CNN.
Utterly amazing.
(Image Credit: Dave Ruff/ CNN)
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