IN DEPTH


Feature Accessibility in children’s books


VIKA BOOKS’ AGUMENTED REALITY STORYBOOK WHERE IS THE BIRD?


Creators and creatives seek to make children’s books accessible to all readers


In the wake of a recent collaboration by Dapo Adeola and Living Paintings to adapt his book for blind readers, The Bookseller meets those in the trade who are working to broaden access


T


Chloe Johnson @ladychloestark


20 22nd March 2022


he vast majorit of us want to embrace being accessible, and when looking to the future generation, we don’t want children to be excluded.


Everyone can recognise the value of young readers seeing themselves reflected positively in literature and being able to engage with the writen word. It sends messages to children that they are a part of, and valued by, societ, and improves their qualit of life, as well as providing them with other educational benefits. So why does publishing still struggle to produce chil-


dren’s books that are truly accessible? The answer is that “accessible” is a very broad word that can be hard to quantify. The issue can seem something to tiptoe around, in case of error, and the UK publishing industry has a propensit for playing it safe. It is only now that we are beginning to embrace the unknown and truly


learn what accessibilit and inclusivit can mean, that we are trialling new ways of creating books that can be accessi- ble to children with disabilities and different access needs. Dapo Adeola, an award-winning illustrator known for creating characters that challenge expectations around race and gender, has recently teamed up with Living Paintings, a charit that adapts picture books into braille and audio formats, on a fundraising campaign so his picture books Look Up! (writen by Nathan Byron; Puffin) and We’re Going to Find the Monster (writen by Malorie Blackman; Puffin) can be adapted into accessible versions for blind children. He comments: “I’ve only been in publishing for three years and the bulk of that has been spent geting my head around being an author/illustrator, so I’m only now geting the picture of how much work needs doing regarding access to books for children of all demographics.”


Innovative new efforts like this help us understand accessibilit more as a societ and normalise reaching towards it. We are learning that while inclusion of children with all kinds of differences in terms of content is incred- ibly important, if children can’t access them, we are only half-way to fixing the problem. Continues overleaf 


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