Braille House has been featured on A Current Affair with a wonderful story about one of our library members who is also the voice of our End of Financial Year campaign.
Click here to see more about this story including the video
While Eva was born with perfect eyesight, a week after her first birthday she became unwell with a virus that attacked her brain.
Her parents still don’t know how she contracted encephalitis from the common cold sore virus, leaving her with next to no vision.
“For some unusual reason this virus only went to the visual processing centre so it is quite rare, generally it is meant to cause massive motor development and cognitive issues,” Eva’s mother, Laura Garcia, explained.
Eva hasn’t let it hold her back though, with the youngster now among the top in her Year Four at a mainstream school on the Sunshine Coast.
But finding Braille books for Eva to read hasn’t always been easy.
For every 100 books a sighted child has access to there are just five for those who are vision impaired.
“A blind person only has a one in 10 chance of receiving an education or getting a job and that is because of a lack of accessible books,” Mrs Garcia said.
“Public libraries don’t have Braille books, book stores don’t have Braille books, I don’t know why, I can’t see why they can’t.”
That’s when Eva and her mum came across Braille House in Brisbane, a volunteer organisation which teaches literacy to the blind and those with low vision, through tutoring and its library of Braille books.
