Books in Braille

Braille books are publications that blind people can read independently by touch. In 1824, Louis Braille, who was blind himself, invented a system of non-visual relief-dot information transmission. This was a real revolution in the education of the blind. Information became accessible to them: not only for reading, but also for writing by people with profound visual impairments.

Letters, punctuation marks, numbers and special symbols in books for the blind are represented by various combinations of dots in the Braille hexadecimal system. Therefore, the shape and size of the convex dots cannot be changed.

Blind people read the embossed hexagon by touch with their fingers. The height of the convex dot is 0.5 mm, the diameter of the dot is 1.2 mm. The distance between dots is 2.5 mm, the distance between characters is 2.3 mm horizontally and 3.8 mm vertically.

Various combinations of hex dots can be used to write 64 characters, including spaces. The so-called "extended braille", which is widely used in computer technology, has two additional dots - the seventh and eighth.

Printing books in Braille

Embossed Braille books and books made according to the principle of universal design - both in Braille and enlarged flat-printed font - are modern printing products that cost more than ordinary books.

Its production requires the joint work of many experienced specialists and special equipment. We have the latest equipment to print embossed texts in Braille and produce tiflography. The demand for such publications for children and adults in Ukraine is growing from year to year.

The "Resource Centre "Barrier-Free Ukraine" offers printing of tactile books for the blind on favourable terms. If you need an alphabet for the blind, you can order its production from our specialists.

Tactile books for the blind: design features

Books in Braille for people with profound visual impairments are printed on special thick paper using the method of one-sided or two-sided embossing. Traditional for the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine, a sheet of a Braille book contains 25 lines of 30 or 32 characters each, with a total size of 31 by 23 cm. Taking into account various binding and cover technologies, a book for the blind in Braille can have a format of 365 x 245 mm.

The sheets of such a book are usually joined by one or two springs.

In recent years, Braille inscriptions have also been applied to the cover. This allows blind readers to find the book they need on their own.

Bookmarks developed by the specialists of the NGO "Resource Centre "Barrier-Free Ukraine" make reading braille books easier. After all, blind readers have to rely only on their own memory.

The development of special and inclusive education in Ukraine has led to an increase in demand for embossed publications for the blind: children's literature, textbooks, albums, maps, alphabets.

Relief publications for the blind, books for blind children, and textbooks must be of very high quality. The choice of material directly affects the cost of the publication.

Tactile image perception - perception by touch

A tactile image is a specially designed drawing that uses a system of relief elements: dots, lines, strokes.

Blind people can recognise them by touch. In this way, only the main elements of the images we are used to can be recognised. Therefore, it is necessary to work with specialists to adapt drawings, diagrams, and maps for the blind before embossing, and then to test them with blind readers.

A tactile image can be conveyed by a path alone. This is a way of conveying the outline of an object with a line of dots, where an element of significance is either shown or not.

It is also possible to render a conditional colour by applying various reliefs to a certain area of the image. However, not all image details can be converted into a tactile diagram, but only the largest and most significant ones. Adaptation of images for the blind requires their obligatory simplification.

Here you can order and buy literature for the blind, tactile Braille tables, and fiction for children with profound visual impairments.

You can always buy literature for the blind, books, albums, maps in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine on the website of the Resource Centre "Barrier-Free Ukraine".