Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh and Tendai Huchu are calling for more audio and braille books at the Edinburgh Book Festival
Leading authors based in Scotland are calling for more books to be made available for blind and partially sighted readers.
Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh and Tendai Huchu, along with comedian Juliette Burton, are backing the drive by sight loss charity RNIB Scotland to create more audio and braille books at an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival today (Friday 21 August).
Previous RNIB events at the Book Festival have heard high-profile writers such as James Kelman, Julia Donaldson, AL Kennedy and Kate Atkinson make the same call.
Speaking before the event, Strachan, the award-winning author of Negative Space and Spin Cycle, said her first involvement with RNIB came when she volunteered to read for its Talking Books audio-library, the largest collection in Europe.
It appals me that anybody could be deprived of the right to read what they want, when they want - Zoe Strachan
"When my own work was first published I wanted it to be available to any reader who was interested," she said.
"It appals me that anybody could be deprived of the right to read what they want, when they want. When we sit down and write, we don't think about how a person will read our words, and it really doesn't matter whether our stories are read, heard or felt using braille.
“Most authors are concerned with reaching readers' minds and hearts. Literature is about communication and connection, and when people are excluded from that, it undermines the whole art form."
Among those at the event will be readers who are blind or partially sighted along with guests from the Scottish literary and publishing world.
Robert Kirkwood, presenter of Insight Radio's Read On programme, will conduct interviews with the authors on stage, while Juliette Burton who has recorded an number of audio books, will speak about the narration process.
Most books published in the UK are inaccessible to blind and partially sighted people because they are never reproduced in audio, braille or large-print, said RNIB Scotland chair Sandra Wilson, who is blind herself.
She said: "The Book Festival is the biggest literary gathering in the world to celebrate the sheer joy of reading, but for people with sight loss their choices are limited in the extreme.
"Only a minority of books published make it into all accessible formats and yet new technology has made it easier and cheaper to produce them in this way. E.books can be read on tablets, e.readers and mobile phones, by adjusting font size, and using electronic braille or synthetic voice.
“We want to show there is a demand for more books for people with sight loss and that authors like Zoe want their work to be available to all.”
RNIB's Talking Books library, currently containing over 21,000 titles, celebrates its 80th anniversary later this year. Across the UK, it has a readership of over 40,000 subscribers. Last year, it issued 1.53 million books to them. It takes two to three months to record a Talking Book and costs, on average, £2,500.
