Font Helps The Blind To “Read”

The Thailand Association of the Blind did approach advertising agency BBDO Proximity recently with a rather special albeit challenging brief: To create equality for the blind or visually impaired alongside a fully sighted person where reading is concerned. This does sound like an impossible ‘problem’ to solve, but I suppose the folks over at BBDO Proximity must have taken a page out of Adidas’ playbook, citing the fact that ‘Impossible is Nothing’. In fact, to meet the requirements of this particular brief, the advertising agency went ahead to create ‘The Storybook for All Eyes’ which involved developing a special font – one that enables children of any vision to be able to read out loud together.

This brilliant font will combine Braille alongside English alphabet, and illustrations in the book itself have been embossed with a hidden image so that the visually impaired kids can also “see” what has been “drawn”, discovering such an image to their joy. The whole idea of this particular storybook is to alter the perception and behavior of people when it comes to how visually impaired people are normally seen. Instead of perceiving the lack of sight as a handicap, the Thailand Association of the Blind intends to highlight how society can integrate children who can see alongside those who are vision impaired equally well. This is definitely a story that warms my heart greatly.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: advertising