In a few weeks, Rachel Flowers, 14, will enter Hueneme High School. Blind virtually since she was born three months prematurely, the diminutive teen and music prodigy from Oxnard will face challenges finding her locker and classrooms.

But once in class, she will have the same opportunities to learn as her classmates, now that an alternative-text production center in Ventura has transcribed her books and materials into Braille and tactile graphics.

"I'm interested in all kinds of topics," said Rachel, whose early school years often were marked by uncomfortable trips to segregated classrooms and instructors who told her to not be a distraction. "Some of my earlier years were tough. But I'm curious to learn now. I think I'm ready."

Like dozens of students around California, her schoolbooks and materials were produced by the Alternate Text Production Center at Ventura College. The center is the only publicly funded facility among California's 110 community colleges dedicated to serving the alternate-text needs of visually impaired students.

The small but bustling production facility recently expanded to handle special orders, like the one for Rachel, and contract jobs from dozens of learning institutions across the nation. It's even launched a program to teach prison inmates to transcribe Braille.

Since a 1975 federal law required public schools to open classrooms to the disabled as fully as possible, more and more disabled Americans have been striving to attend college and translate their educational gains into economic gains.

"We're here to try to give them the same opportunities as anyone else," center Director Michael Bastine said.

The center, founded in 2002, uses new technology and old-fashioned human ingenuity to translate virtually any existing print or electronic document into a product that can be read by someone who is blind or suffers a print-related disability, such as an allergy to ink.

The center's small, hired staff and student workers produce everything from Braille books and Braille sheet music to electronic text files and audio recordings.

"The quality is the highest there is," said Richard Taesch, a noted author and leader of the Braille Music Division at the Southern California Conservatory of Music, which has hired the center for printing needs.

Taesch wrote a book on Braille sheet music to dispel ill-conceived notions that have discouraged students from learning to read Braille music, or have caused teachers to think music reading is only for sighted students.

Taesch has worked with Rachel, who started playing piano at age 2 and was sequencing Mozart and Rachmaninov at age 6. She also plays the flute. He described her as gifted and likely destined, thanks in part to the materials, to attend a top-notch music school. "Not many college students could be successful without these alternative materials," he said.

Transcribing an English book into Braille is relatively easy, and today's embossing printers can print on two sides, cutting down on pages. But graphics, particularly three-dimensional images such as topographical maps, often pose a challenge. Any image that can't be described by words is converted to a tactile graphic.

Community colleges don't have to pay for the alternative materials. For outside orders, however, a 700-page math book can cost $12,000 to $45,000 to transcribe into Braille. It can take four to 10 Braille pages for each page of printed text, not counting the graphics, which often require multiple pages depending on their complexity. A 300-page calculus text quickly can become a 2,000-page, multi-volume tome.

Each graphic is printed on special micro-capsule paper that feels rubbery to the touch and must be run by hand through a desktop heating element affectionately known among the staff as the "toaster." The heat from the toaster produces the raised lines and grooves.

Marlene Nord scans each book with her fingertips, ensuring each page is in order. Blind since birth, Nord, 49, is one of the center's senior page readers.

Some blind youths today don't learn Braille because so much is available in audio format, said Nord, who learned Braille at age 6 at a state school for the blind in her home state of Wisconsin. But she's convinced that learning to read Braille can give the visually impaired more independence. That and advances in technology have helped disabled individuals do jobs that were once impossible and move into the mainstream work force.

To Sandy Greenberg, the center's Braille coordinator, helping someone like Rachel go to high school or play music or live a more independent lifestyle is a touching and powerful motivator.

"You think about that, and it's pretty easy to get excited about what we do," said Greenberg, a technical illustrator before she came to the center in 2002.

Like most parents, Dan and Jeanie Flowers just want the best for their daughter. The couple know high school will be a challenge, both academically and socially. But they're excited to see Rachel grow up.

"She belongs in the classroom," said Dan. "That's the only place to know what's going on."

On the Net:

http://www.atpc.net