Nearly a decade ago, Paul Weingartner began a journey that eventually would lead him and the Assemblies of God Center for the Blind to Narnia.
After years of waiting and wanting to produce a Braille version of C.S. Lewis’ classic, The Chronicles of Narnia, with tactile pictures, Weingartner and the CftB are close to completing the voyage.
The CftB version of Narnia is not actually the first time the works have been transcribed into Braille, but it is distinct in at least two other ways.
First, a tactile picture accompanies each chapter, and allows Blind readers to “see” what Lewis describes. Then, the CftB intends to never again let the work be “out of print,” unlike the other Braille translations in existence.
The process to produce one edition is no simple task for the CftB. In all, one book in the series takes approximately 15 weeks to complete.
Twelve weeks are devoted to preparing the normal print book for transcription, a process which includes manually keying in the entire text and then the proofreading process. Then, it takes three weeks to convert each picture into a tactile graphic.
