Creating a Children's Book about Students with Visual Impairments

During a five-day spring break immersion trip to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, my roommate Kaitlyn Czerwonka and I had an amazing opportunity. While on the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind campus, we wrote, illustrated, and published a children's book about a student who has a visual impairment: "Francis's Superpowers Dealing with Blindness". This book, we feel, is unique in several ways. The story is about a student with a visual impairment and how he goes about his typical day using his "superpowers". These superpowers are everyday items for a person with a visual impairment such as, using braille and assistive technology. Also, this book is written both in text and braille and is illustrated both with standard illustrations and embossed pictures to allow students with a visual impairment feel the illustrations. This book is only the first one we have completed, but we are in the process of completing other books within the series.

 

"Francis' Superpowers Dealing with Blindness" it what we are calling a success story. This is due to its ability to transform itself to include students with different needs. As educators, mothers, fathers, and so much more, we already know, all students learn differently and this includes our students with and without vision. After our experience teaching at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, we knew that we had to take what learned from our students and turn those lessons into something we could use in any general  classroom we might teach in. This book can truly be enjoyed by all!