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feels massively important. As well as the braille interleaved books, the collection also includes an impressive array of tactile books, a real treasure trove! Nearly 1,000 family members use the postal library free of charge, while 338 schools, Vision Impairment Services and Libraries are organisational members for the price of £50 per year. Musing upon ways people might be able to support the work of ClearVision itself, Anne discusses the Typhlo and Tactus Award. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, it is an international award for tactile- illustrated books. Running annually, the award offers a great opportunity to get creative. Guidance on how to create tactile books and information on entering these annual awards can be found by visiting the ClearVision website
www.clearvisionproject.org. Entries for the competition will be returned unless creators give permission to add these to the ClearVision library where they will become part of the UK’s only loanable collection of fully tactile books, comprising over 1000 copies. ClearVision is delighted when children outgrow their library and are fluent readers as this gives a chance for them to move onto the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) National Library Service which has a wide selection for those ready to read longer books.
Lynne Livingstone, Books Collection Development Assistant is eager to discuss the work of the RNIB. Lynne starts by explaining that the RNIB has existed in various forms for over 150 years and is the largest audio and braille library for the blind in Europe. The organisation supports its users through a variety of different platforms including talking books on compressed CDs – this means they don’t have to be spread awkwardly across multiple discs or USB sticks. RNIB are also working
Autumn-Winter 2019
The idea of downloadable braille sounds fascinating.
CILIP Carnegie Medal winner, Elizabeth Acevedo is presented with a braille copy of her winning book The Poet X by Lynne Livingstone, RNIB.
with OverDrive, the distributor of digital content for libraries and schools, to develop a new platform for downloadable audio and braille.
The idea of downloadable braille sounds fascinating. Lynne explains that it is accessed through a special braille device – about the size of two iPhones. At the bottom of the device there’s an area where pins pop-up forming the braille, when a reader gets to the end of a line it automatically refreshes, so keeping pace with the reader. The RNIB also runs a sister site, Bookshare, which provides education resources for print-disabled learners (including those with dyslexia or who are partially sighted). The site holds textbooks and materials to support the UK curriculum in a range of formats; text- to speech; large print, digital as well as resources for teachers. The service is free for educators supporting learners with print disabilities and holds over 200,000 accessible curriculum and leisure titles and over 3,000 large print and tactile images.
As previously mentioned, the RNIB has a long-standing partnership with the CILIP Carnegie Medal. The offer has changed over time, largely due to financial constraints, but the RNIB makes
copies of the shortlisted books available in braille and giant print for schools to borrow or purchase. Braille copies are available from the RNIB and giant print via Guide Dogs. Lynne enthuses about the impact shadowing the Carnegie has on young people at New College Worcester, a national residential school for young people aged 11-19 who are blind or visually impaired. The books challenge the young people to think, capture their imaginations and can even lead to fierce debate. It’s a powerful reminder of the way books and stories can affect our lives. The shadowing group at New College Worcester has had shortlisted authors visit including Frances Hardinge and Marcus Sedgwick. Marcus was so impressed by his visit that he was inspired to write, She is Not Invisible (2013) an equal parts thriller and mystery where Laureth Peak, a blind protagonist must uncover the circumstances behind her father’s disappearance.
The RNIB has an impressive reach sending braille out worldwide to people as far away as America and New Zealand and across the whole of the UK from the Orkneys to the West Country. Lynne explains how easy it is for people’s worlds to bit-by-bit begin to narrow when they
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