A blind artist who combines braille with pop art has created a children’s book.
On the outside, Mr Dot and His Magical White Cane Adventures looks like an average book.
But, when opened, one side is suitable for sighted readers and the other side is mirrored in braille, something that is not considered standard for braille books.
It has been created by Clarke Reynolds, from Portsmouth, who said he was “all about making braille universal” and wanted to normalise blindness.
Mr Reynolds has gradually been losing his sight since he was six years old and has been using braille as an artform for almost seven years.
As his career evolved, he said he created the persona Mr Dot when he started going into schools to teach children about braille.
“Just like a typographer uses a letter, Mr Dot uses a dot,” he explained. “For me the dot has more power, it becomes a vessel to host the English language.”
Mr Reynolds said using braille in his artwork was a way to make it “accessible for everyone”.
“People used to ask how I see and I used to say ‘It’s like looking through a thousand dots’,” he continued.
“When I learnt braille, my brain just clicked in, like it was meant to be.
“Taking an image and simplifying it down to its basic bones. Basically, I’m a pixelated artist, just that I don’t use all the pixels, I take them away.”
Since creating the Mr Dot character, Mr Reynolds has travelled around the UK teaching more than 20,000 children about the use of braille, which is what inspired his new book.
“I’m all about making braille universal,” he said.
“If I wanted a braille book, it would come in volumes because of how braille is done – they are thick books inside these sort of filofaxes and considered specialised in bookshops.
“I wanted it to look like a normal book. It’s about treating it as a normal publication.”
