Feelix

I have long been besotted by this picture which features in an ad that sometimes runs in the Melbourne print media for Vision Australia. Unfortunately I could not find an image of the complete advertisement but the gorgeous little boy is reading a braille book and the illustrations are recreations of his imaginings.

What Vision Australia does with it’s Feelix Program is so outstanding. They have a unique braille book library of 450 titles that they have developed for children with no or low vision between the ages of birth and 6. It consists of kits that they have created to expose the children to some absolute classics of children’s literature. The kits contain a picture book in braille, an audio reading of the book and some interesting tactile aids to help the child immerse themselves in the story. The example they use on their website is The Tiger Who Came To Tea by Judith Kerr in which the book and the audio is accompanied by an enamel tea set.  

They are now running a fab new ad featuring Sam from Suess’ Green Eggs and Ham that you can see in full here.

Another wonderful initiative I came across recently is Dreaming Fingers a joint project between a publisher in India and a publisher in the Netherlands which is creating tactile picture books for blind or visually impaired children. They have a gorgeous website where you can view their vision statement and also flick through a copy of their tactile version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. From their website it looks like they have also developed The Gruffalo.

Every book is hand made in India.