It’s no secret that events like these attract hobbyists of all shapes and sizes. The works of Kevin Smith celebrate this fact, showing the collectibles world to be a cross-section of humanity, a place where any and all are welcome so long as they keep their common interests at heart. Because of this, the strange and different have become the norm here. Jamie Tachiyama’s example, therefore, must be exceptional if you’re reading about it here.

Playing Big Brotherhood, Jamie lost his first round to an unfortunate draw that saw him play the same Toad four times in his first six turns, returning the little man to his hand over and again as he lacked other playable characters. Of course, this kind of adversity is easy to overcome for a guy like Jamie, who faces obstacles every day. Playing a game based in a world of images and text, Jamie Tachiyama is the Pro Circuit’s first legally blind participant. 

Jamie was born twenty-eight years ago with retinal blastoma, a form of cancer that forced the removal of his eyes in infancy. Now, he and his constant companion Trevor, a six-year old lab, have found a home in gaming. A long-time L5R and D&D enthusiast, Jamie has made the conversion to Vs. System easily, with braille-embedded sleeves and a strong retentive memory helping to translate the cards.

A customer service agent for Verizon Wireless, Jamie graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in—wait for it—Interpersonal Communication. He got into the game when his fiancée heard about it online. Jamie uses a program called Job Access With Speech (JAWS) which, in his words “ . . . turns the screen into verbal text. It reads the screen off to me.” The program apparently uses intonation to help define punctuation for the “reader,” though Jamie admits it still sounds highly mechanized and more than a little cheesy.

In describing his blindness, Jamie explained while being interviewed that he doesn’t see darkness, spots, or blurriness, so much as there is no sight. There’s nothing to miss, but his other senses help to offset this void. His hearing judges for distance, his hands provide his “near sight” and Trevor does the rest.

Jamie received Trevor from Guide Dogs for the Blind in October of 1999, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Trevor responds immediately and compliantly to Jamie’s voice-activated commands, but when not serving as seeing eye dog, he very openly seeks attention from anyone within arms reach, flopping to the ground to signify his desire to be scratched and mauling curious onlookers with a combination of hair, saliva, and good-natured affection. If the scratching stops, Trevor knows that stretching out a paw to signify his massage should continue will usually do the trick. It’s hard to say no to those puppy dog eyes.

A well coordinated team in a field of individuals, Jamie and Trevor hope to rebound from their first round loss well enough to force the judges to figure out how to handle his participation in the draft portion of the tournament. The easy answer is that he may not make the cut to Day 2, but right now, everything from having a judge whisper card functions in his ear to the use of braille sleeves on all the cards in his draft are being considered. Hopefully, these are problems that will have to be answered quickly.