About Us
Beyond Braille is one-of-a-kind tactile picture series designed for the visually impaired community. The series comes as breakthrough research to explore pictures like never before. These tactile picture series include books, materials, and resources including storybooks, menu cards, manuals, maps, greetings, collaterals, packaging, signage, calendars, and everything visual.
Though a variety of methods have already been developed for communicating information to the visually impaired community. Methods like Braille, a system of raised dots, is one such method that is widely used by them, which enables them to read and write. But the problem lies here when you think of books in Braille what comes to mind are plain white sheets embossed with dots. It’s hard to imagine a book with vibrant tactile pictures. Therefore, the idea of an illustration picture series for the visually impaired community was conceived seven years back.
How can we make the act of reading pictures more interesting to the visually impaired and spark a love for reading that would last a lifetime?
Nupur Agarwal
Our Mission & Vision
We understand that opening the world of picture books to visually impaired community is an essential pathway to making
literature and society more inclusive. Since education is one of the most effective vehicles of social and economic empowerment.
Our Mission
Our Vision
Ranchhod Sees the World
While working on the differently-abled thesis project during my M.A., my groundwork research and study with visually impaired children made me realize that reading should be a more captivating experience for them. They need a better understanding of the world that was hitherto unknown to them.
I considered the idea of designing tactile picture books to ignite a spark of love for pictures that could last with them for a lifetime. And thus what started as a college thesis project in 2014 became my motivation to bring the world of embossed images to the visually impaired community. The first tactile picture braille book, aka thesis project, was named “Ranchhod Sees the World” after a lot of exploration and experimentation for the visually impaired community.
Fast forward to 2016: I resumed my research again by visiting visually impaired pre-schools. Thanks to the advancement in technology, and further exploration of 3D printing and other types of embossing methods and materials we eventually achieved a similar effect to communicating it to the visually impaired.
~ Nupur Agarwal, Founder