Beep baseball is like regular baseball, but with adaptations for the blind.

“A common misconception is that blind people can see nothing, but that’s really not true,” said Camp Abilities camper Batya Sperling-Milner. “Most blind people have some sight, so to make it fair and equal, we’re all wearing eye shades, and then there is a beeping baseball, so you know where to hit when you’re batting.”

Camp Abilities is a sports summer camp for the blind and visually impaired, and this is the camp’s 10th summer in Saratoga.

“Usually I’m in more mainstream spaces where I’m the only blind person, so it’s really great to be in a place where I’m not the only one, and my needs are centered and everyone here kind of knows the drill when it comes to blindness," Sperling-Milner said.

The camp in Saratoga is only one of more than 25 Camp Abilities across the world. There are five in New York, serving hundreds of visually impaired kids.

“Kids shouldn’t … shouldn’t be sitting on the sidelines; they shouldn’t be going to the library or walking around the track while all their peers are playing sports, so that negative perception that people with visual impairments are dependent or incompetent continues unless we change things," says Dr. Lauren Lieberman, the founder of Camp Abilities.

Changing the narrative is exactly what Lieberman did when she founded the first Camp Abilities almost 30 years ago. According to the American Foundation for the Blind, there are more than half a million kids in the U.S. with serious visual impairments.

“We need more camps, and we need more physical education majors, practicing teachers to come and learn what the kids can do," Lieberman said.

Those kids include Sperling-Milner, who enjoys being in a space where she doesn’t stand out for being blind.

“Because these things are new, I’m pretty mediocre at them and I'm working up to things,” Sperling-Milner said. “So like in my normal life, I do things and people say ‘you’re amazing,’ or I do things and they’re like ‘oh, I feel so bad for her,’ so it's nice to just be mediocre; I'm working on it; I'm getting better and it doesn’t mean I have to be great at it yet, and that's a really nice feeling that I haven’t really felt in sighted spaces.”