'Rebus' author launches £2m drive to rebuild the Scottish Braille Press
Howard Lake | 14 January 2009 | News
The Scottish Braille Press has begun a £2 million appeal to re-house one of the nation’s leading Braille printing presses. It coincides with National Braille Week (4-10 Jan 2009), which this year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, the inventer of the embossed dots writing system.
Ian Rankin, author of the ‘Inspector Rebus’ novels, is lending his support to the campaign. His son is a pupil at the Royal Blind School, also run by Royal Blind.
One of Rankin’s best-selling Rebus books is Fleshmarket Close, named after a real passageway in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Today he was there to unveil 12 pages from the novel, which have been translated into Braille and mounted on the walls of the passageway itself.
Rankin is calling for more creative works to be made available to people with reading difficulties. To mark the appeal, the Press is printing a Braille version of Rankin’s Death is Not the End and the author visited the Press to see the first printed copies.
Braille books, magazines and other materials are produced by the Scottish Braille Press. It is part of the national charity Royal Blind, that provides services for the blind and the press specialises in the high quality production of Braille, large print and audio, providing a transcription service since 1891.
“Although equipped with state of the art printing equipment the building itself needs to be rebuilt” said Richard Hellewell, chief executive of Royal Blind, “and this is why we are campaigning to raise £2 million.”
The printing press, run and managed by Royal Blind, was built in the sixties and will be completely rebuilt.
www.royalblind.org
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.