Brailleraiser

Do you enjoy reading a good book? It's easy for most of us to grab a book, for a few dollars or even free, get a nice beverage, sit in a comfy chair, and get engulfed in a great story. But if you are vision-impaired, this can be more of a fantasy. This is a fundraiser to help one of the few people trained in teaching the visually impaired to begin to build a library of braille books for her students.

Kelly Wakefield has recently received her Master's degree and is licensed in Illinois to teach visually-impaired children up to the age of 20. Braille is important to learn to be literate and able to function in the world. Yes, one can get by with technology such as text-to-voice, but that's not something anyone can rely upon forever. Thus there will always remain a need for reading braille.

But we all know that sometimes learning can be boring, especially from textbooks, and that good stories can really engage a learner. For those who are visually impaired, finding books that are engaging and entertaining, and printed in braille, can be impossibly expensive or just impossible because they don't exist. A good example is the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin. To get the whole series in braille costs $1500!?!?! Seriously, fifteen hundred dollars for a series of books that most people would take for granted as easily obtained.

By contributing to this GoFundMe, you will help purchase a refreshable braille reader, or if we can reach the stretch goal of $1600+ we can get 2. The reader will become part of the traveling library used by Kelly Wakefield throughout north central Illinois.