Father invents way to read along with his blind son

The professor invented a design which combines the book’s original text with Braille, allowing both sighted and blind people to read the same book at the same time.

Eric and his wife Leslie were frustrated because they wanted to able to read stories with their son. But traditional Braille books are printed in a way that doesn’t make it easy for a sighted person to read along. As the Braille reader’s fingers scan the Braille, the printed words are often covered up. Also some books were Braille-only books with no corresponding words in print, while others had Braille printed on plastic pages that either adhered to the original pages, sometimes covering the text and illustrations, or were bound in separately where the Braille didn’t align with the printed words.

“For Ethan to share books with siblings and friends (like his brother, Spencer), the original illustrations and text needed to remain intact. I basically took the list of problems, and thought, ‘How am I going to solve these?”, the father recalled.

Eric redesigned well-known children’s books so that print and Braille readers could enjoy the same book. This design includes the original text and illustration at the top of each page, and Braille at the bottom with the corresponding print also directly above.

This presents a solution by preventing the Braille reader’s hands from blocking what the sighted reader needs to see, and it enabled a sighted reader to learn Braille basics.

Each book also has a Braille glossary in the back for the alphabet, numbers and punctuation.

Eric presented his idea in a conference, and founded BrailleInk, a non profit organization to design and sell the books with his partner Bruce Curtis.

Adapted from: http://americanprofile.com/articles/brailleink/

More info: http://www.brailleink.org