It will have been necessary to wait more than forty years since the institution of the single price of the book. More than 2,000 books in braille are, since Wednesday, January 4, accessible at the price of a classic book, announced the Center for transcription and publishing in braille (CTEB) in a press release. While the catalog CTEB, France’s main braille printing press, bookstore and publishing house, based in Toulouse, has until now offered its books for sale between 60 and 122 euros, they will now be sold at prices between 11 and 30 euros.
“It’s a bold bet”explains the director of the center, Adeline Coursant, because her institution only has the capacity to finance this price change for one or even two years. “We will have to quickly find help to be able to continue”she specifies, considering however that the risk is worth it, “because it is finally doing justice to the blind”.
Higher manufacturing cost
The cost of manufacturing a book in Braille – around 700 euros, according to the CTEB – is much higher than that of traditional books, because it requires transcription work done by specialists, special machines and specific paper, more thick.
“This is an excellent initiative, since access to Braille reading allows blind and visually impaired people who practice it to have direct access [au livre] unlike audio reading, where we have the prism of someone reading a book”rejoices Bruno Gendron, president of the Federation of the blind of France.
On the other hand, selling the books at the market price, “this eliminates the discriminatory phenomenon vis-à-vis blind and visually impaired people who had to pay more” for the same work, he added.
To launch its initiative, the CTEB has chosen the symbolic date of January 4, which is World Braille Day. It was established in 2001 by the World Blind Union to celebrate the birth of the inventor of this tactile alphabet, the Frenchman Louis Braille, on January 4, 1809.
According to figures provided by Mr. Gendron, between 1.7 and 2 million people are visually impaired in metropolitan France. Among them, about 15%, or between 255,000 and 300,000 people, read Braille.