BLIND AMBITION
Local business producing Disney activity books for children in braille
“Hello, Disney? I’ve got an idea for you.”
Who picks up the phone and cold calls a multinational entertainment conglomerate with an idea that popped into their head in the middle of the night? Emmanuel Blaevoet does. “He’s really persistent,” notes his wife and business partner, Rebecca.
Emmanuel first shared the idea of producing a braille children’s book featuring Disney characters about four years ago.
“It took a long time to convince me it would go anywhere,” Rebecca said.
Almost two years ago, he broached the idea again and this time, a co-worker found a telephone number for someone connected to Disney consumer products in New York.
That person actually listened to their pitch and put Rebecca in touch with someone in Disney’s California office. As negotiations went back and forth for months, Emmanuel believes they turned on an “Aha moment” he offered up in one phone conversation.
“I said ‘do you realize blind kids don’t know what Mickey Mouse looks like?’”
And so, the owners of Tactile Vision Graphics on Erie Street eventually signed a contract with Disney late last year to produce a minimum of 15 children’s activity books for distribution across North America.
The first book, which will be out soon, will feature several classic figures in Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto and Goofy.
“It’s been a ton of fun working with them,” said Rebecca, a Windsor native who has been blind since birth. “To be able to create these images you can touch that you’re familiar with in the abstract is really neat. “
In January, Emmanuel was given the virtual keys to the Disney kingdom’s portal of character images. They granted him access to tens of thousands of images.
Their contract is for three years and includes the production of books to coincide with Disney’s film schedule over the same time frame.
“They want you to maximize sales before the film comes out and on the day of release,” said Rebecca, noting Disney gets a royalty for each book sold.
Each activity book features several pages of pictures with raised outlines that allow a blind child to colour the image within the required borders.
There was nothing like that available when Rebecca was a kid eager to colour.
“A number of times I would try to colour and my mom would say ‘Becky, that’s beautiful, tell me what it is.”
As a child, Rebecca had little concept of what Mickey Mouse looked like, other than knowing by the sound of his voice. “Cartoons were never really accessible,” she said. In addition to pictures, each activity book will feature puzzles, mazes and a reading component. Some of Rebecca’s visually impaired friends are already looking forward to their second book, featuring Bambi.
“They’re in their late 40s and they’re excited to see what Bambi looks like,” she said.
The Canadian Institute for the Blind says there are 500,000 blind or visually impaired people in Canada, with almost 200,000 in Ontario alone.
In the U.S., 2016 statistics put the number of legally blind Americans at 3.4 million.
When the first book is complete and approved, it will be available online at tactilevisiongraphics. com as well as Amazon and likely Walmart Canada’s website.
It will mark the first time in Disney’s 90-year history that materials for the blind or visually impaired have been offered to consumers.