International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

Braille and ClearVision Books for Children

Children with visual impairment have always been provided with some materials,
particularly if they are braille users, but have suffered from the theory that if they are
blind, the school will provide. Children using braille first learnt the alphabet, then the
various contractions, usually mastering level one before being introduced to
independent reading of braille in story form. Schools provided some fiction in braille,
but it was often books for older children and very rarely books which would interest and
enthuse a newly independent reader aged between 7 and 10. The Royal National
Institute for the Blind tried to maintain a reasonable service, but brailling is time-
consuming and until recently, not automated to a great degree.
In order to try and increase the fluency of readers, and to lower the age at which blind
children became independent readers, some schools, together with the Royal National
Institute for the Blind, introduced a process which placed braille on the same page as
print in trade produced books. To begin with a self-adhesive strip was brailled then
stripped into existing trade publications. While this was helpful to the child who could
already read braille, and it allowed sharing between blind and sighted readers, it did not
overcome the difficulties of the child learning to read through the medium of braille. At
Linden Lodge School in London a further development took place which has changed the
way in which blind children learn to read. Following on from developments in Australia,
Canada and America, staff at Linden Lodge began to experiment with brailling sheets of
clear plastic which could be inserted into trade books. In other countries this method
was already in use, but the braille was placed on special paper, not plastic—a method
which made the book bulky, broke up a double page spread and made reading tedious
and frustrating. By using clear plastic, the page was not disfigured in any way and both
sighted and blind readers could share the same book. This project became ‘ClearVision’
which now supplies brailled picture books and non-fiction to a growing number of
schools, libraries and individuals. By giving blind children access to trade picture books
through ClearVision braille, they now learn to read using the same books as sighted
children. This has increased the demand for more books for younger fluent braille
readers and in turn created a subscription market for the brailling of early independent
reading titles. In addition the development of microelectronic reading aids such as the
Kurzweil Reading Machine has opened up a new world of literature to blind children.

Large Print for Children

Until the mid-1980s there was virtually no large print available for children with visual
difficulties. If they had sufficient sight to learn to read print, by the time they were
reading with some degree of fluency, the children found that the books they wanted to
read were printed in too small or dense typefaces and narrow margins. This was because
publishers in their wisdom reduced the size of type in fiction for fluent readers in the
mistaken belief than once a child can read, the size of print becomes immaterial. One
exception to this has been the London publisher Cape, who have published many of Roald
Dahl’s titles in a large clear type face, with plenty of vertical and horizontal spacing
therefore making the books much easier to read.

APPLICATIONS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 639