Teaching Your Baby In Braille

My name is Janie Desir, and I have been a client with Division of the Blind in West Palm Beach, Florida since 2017. Mrs. Williamson has been my counselor there for the past 4 years. I will be graduating from Indian River State College in May with a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design /Digital Media. I have been working with Adobe Accessibilities to see if they might be able to make their software more efficient for visually impaired people like myself, and we have made some great progress in that direction.

I have a rare eye disease called Keratoconus. I started having problems with my sight while I was in school working on my Associate’s degree in Digital Media. I was able to continue my school work for a while using hard contact lenses until my eyes rejected them. I received help from Division of the Blind service which referred me to the Rehabilitation Center for the Blind in Daytona Beach. The independent living program there helped me to learn all the basics important to someone with little to no vision.

It was there that I discovered my passion for baking, and I have been attempting to develop that talent into a business since then. I also discovered an even stronger passion for graphic design. One particular instructor at the Daytona program, Mr. Gary, selflessly shared his time (and patience!) to teach me to use a Mac Computer using voice over. Mr. Gary would even spend his time on lunch break learning all the different ways to teach me the Mac computer, since most of the students at the school used Windows-based computers.

While I was in the Daytona program, I did a work-study with an instructor named Mr. Whitehead, where I created a newsletter for the school. I was so proud to be given that opportunity! I eventually graduated from the independent living program, and returned to school to work on my degree.

I became a mother for the first time in March 2020. I was overjoyed, but also terrified. As a single parent, I didn’t know how I was going to raise my son by myself. Becoming a parent, though, inspired me to want to give my child every good thing, and the best possible life I could give him despite my own limitations.

I recently did some research to see if there were any books that visually impaired parents could read to their sighted babies. There were lots of audio books, which was fine but it wasn’t the ‘hands on’ quality experience I was looking for. So, I decided to create a book in braille that would allow visually impaired/blind parents to teach their sighted children the alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors.

My goal is to help parents just like me to have the same story time bonding experience that sighted parents enjoy with their children. I am sincerely hoping to get my books published and to make them available to everyone and anyone. I would be most grateful for your help with finding a publisher that might be able to help me with funding for this worthwhile project. I believe deeply that this would be a great investment and a huge benefit to all of the blind parents I have encountered who have had the same experience with only the audio books for story time. I would greatly appreciate anything you could do to help me make these parents’ wishes come true.

Newspaper Article

Respectfully,

Janie Desir