From its long clinical experience, comes the strong need on the part of the Robert Hollman Foundation to promote the culture of tactile illustrated books for children with visual impairment and to facilitate their availability, so that they become more and more everyday “friends” of reading, play and learning. With this in mind, the FRH’s commitment has for years also taken the form of collaboration in the organization and implementation of the National Illustrated Tactile Publishing Competition “It’s Your Turn!”, the next edition of which will be held in 2026 in Assisi, April 18 and 19.
Thanks to the efforts of the National Federation of Pro Blind Institutions for the production and dissemination of these important tools, many steps forward have been taken. Tactile illustrated books are, in fact, wonderful works that require enormous craftsmanship in order to live up to the expectations of young readers and to be accessible to them according to their different functionalities. Many of these books, by their very design, do not lend themselves to being reproduced, representing wonderful unique works.
On the other hand, there is a growing demand from children, parents, teachers, educators, therapists… to have these invaluable tools at their disposal, in terms of content and features. Therefore, there is a growing need to increase their production, so that they reach more readers, with and without disabilities, and professionals for their reading activities with didactic, educational, and therapeutic purposes, which facilitate and improve the involvement of the children themselves.
And that is why the Foundation experiences this need as a challenge, which it would like to share with the authors of tactile books, so that they can conceive works that can land on larger and economically sustainable print runs based on some of their original characteristics (format, number of pages, materials…).
Given this background, within the upcoming National Competition “It’s Your Turn!” will be proposed for the first time the Special mention “Editable Book,” which draws its inspiration and origin from the still ongoing work that the Robert Hollman Foundation is doing in collaboration with the Department of Educational Sciences “G.M. Bertin” of the University of Bologna, within the Research Project “Visual Disabilities, Books and Tactile Routes.” and the work of the “Editability Group,” which in 2023 led to the production of 200 copies of “A Home for Fiammetta” by Claudia and Andrea Sorrenti, a book that won the “Editability” Award at the Typhlo & Tactus 2022 International Competition.
But what are these editability features identified so far that an author might consider so that their book is more likely to be reproduced editorially?
We share an open letter to the authors of tactile illustrated books, which delves into the concept and history of editability and lays out its main characteristics identified so far. The work, in fact, is “in progress”: thanks to the contribution and original solutions that everyone will want, in the future, to elaborate and add in their work, the idea of editability will only become more defined and enriched, increasing the chances that tactile picture books will be more easily reproduced.
