Bithday Gift Program Created for Visually Impaired Children

Thanks to a donation to the National Library for the Blind from the Lions Club United Kingdom, visually impaired children throughout the United Kingdom will each receive a special birthday gift this year. Members of the National Library for the Blind between the ages of 8 and 12 will receive a birthday gift in the form of a giant print book to mark their birthdays.

Director information services at the NLB, Pat Beech, stated "Visually impaired children don't have the same opportunities to buy books as their sighted friends, which makes the Birthday Gift Book scheme vitally important. They can't just pop to the local shop to browse the Giant Print book selection because it simply doesn't exist. We feel this project is an ideal way for these children to start to build their own personal library of books to read again and again."

Currently only 5% of books published each year in the United Kingdom are available for people that are visually impaired. The addition of a Giant Print service means that NLB will now be able to offer more selections to the 20,000 partially sighted young people and children. Beech added "We launched the UK's very first lending library of books in Giant Print aimed at partially-sighted children and teenagers last year and it's already proving extremely popular. It's a free service to all who need it and we've already had some very positive feedback from parents and schools. The book birthday gifts scheme is a logical extension of this service, and we hope it will prove popular with the children and their parents."