Les Doigts Qui Rêvent, (Dreaming Fingers) was born in 1993 after we noticed the total lack of access to TiBs (Tactile Illustrated Books) for visually impaired children in France.
A group of parents and a teacher, seeing no official answers, decided to react. One teacher in the group managed to produce one TiB (100 copies of a collage book) by sheer improvisation. But the success of this TiB proved that it was urgent to create a special workshop to produce TiBs.
Les Doigts Qui Rêvent is a publisher with charitable status.
Our aims are :
- to create and produce TiBs accessible to blind children with the same level of quality as books for sighted children.
- to help blind children in their social integration.
Tasks :
- Create and to produce TiBs and distribute them at a normal price to all the same cultural places where the sighted find their books (public libraries, schools, museums, etc...)
- Call professional writers/illustrators to work in the tactile illustration field
- Develop international co-operation
- Foster the integration of blind children through activities in mainstream schools
- Sensitize public librarians to the need for TiBs in their libraries
- Develop research into TiBs in partnership with universities
- Help blind children from poor countries as much as possible
Our philosophy does not accept any human exploitation. So instead of sending our production to a country with very low wages, we have created a workshop in our town providing a way for people with marked social disabilities to start to have a normal life and find a normal job.
What we have already done :
Creation of the TiB "Au pays d'Amandine dine dine" and 4 tactile puzzles
Production of 100 copies of that TiB and those puzzles
Ldqr registered as a charity
Study journey in Europe to meet people involved in TiB (France, Spain, Italy, UK)
Creation of our workshop: 1 technical caregiver
Organisation of the international meeting about TiB (Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Russia, England, France) “Learning to read, yes, but what?” in Dijon.
- Creation of Tactus, the first European award for TiB with, Belgium, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, in a European Framework "Culture 2000"
- The French Education Minister awarded us our first grant.
The workshop has 2 caregivers and 6 workers
- Creation of the Amandine Centre: Research Centre about tactile pictures, a set of partnerships with universities.
- The workshop has 2 supervisors and 10 workers
Creation of a new department (ToM’s3D) using a new technique to put Braille and drawing in relief on any smooth surface.
Tactus became Typhlo & Tactus with : Belgium, Czech Rep., Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom.
Setting up a new research group, BiTiB (Blind Infants’ Tactile Illustrated Books) with Italy, Netherlands, Quebec, France.
A new collection, Corpus Tactilis for the professional working with visually impaired children.
147 TiB titles produced = 30 000 copies among them 7 689 TiBs produced in 7 languages
We create and produce :
- early adaptation TiBs
- school TiBs (for children under 6)
- youth literacy TiBs (for children from 3 to 12)
- short novels (large print and Braille)
- artistic TiBs (for all ages)
- essays for professionals (world wide)
We distribute schools and educational materials from :
- Italy
- South Africa
- United Kingdom
Our tactile illustrations use the following techniques :
- collage (90 %)
- embossing (10%)