ClearVision
- Telephone: 020 8789 9575
- Website: http://www.clearvisionproject.org
ClearVision is a UK postal lending library of mainstream children's books with added braille.
Services for people with sight loss
The ClearVision postal library has over 14,000 mainstream children’s books to which the braille text has been added on clear plastic sheets. This adaptation enables blind and sighted children and adults to share books. The books are lent to families, schools and public libraries all over the UK for the use of children who are learning braille or for adult braille readers who want to read with sighted children or grandchildren. They are also ideal for introducing sighted children to the concept of braille in a meaningful and attractive context.
ClearVision was set up to provide books for children who are or who will be learning braille. The majority of children with sight loss have enough sight to cope with large print and blind children with additional learning difficulties may well find braille too much of a challenge. This leaves a fairly small but vitally important group of children for whom braille is the route to literacy. ClearVision also stocks simple books in Moon (an easier alternative to braille) for children who need it.
ClearVision books are ideal for braille-reading adults to share with young sighted children and some libraries have found that the books are more used by blind parents and grandparents than by children with a visual impairment.
Services for libraries
Four libraries in Wales borrow braille and print books from ClearVision so that they can meet the needs of local schools and families. Four schools and five Visual Impairment Services in Wales are members of the ClearVision library, along with twenty-seven families with one or more braille readers.
When libraries join ClearVision (for an annual membership fee currently set at £50) they receive twenty picture books or ten longer books for newly-fluent readers or a mixture of both. Libraries can request books for a particular borrower, or for a specific age group, or to cater for a variety of users. They can keep these books for up to a year or change them up to six times a year. The books travel post free as Articles for the Blind.