Tactile Vision printing second run of Disney braille books after success

An idea from six years ago has finally come to fruition the first braille activity books featuring popular Disney characters are in the hands of children across North America.

Windsor company Tactile Vision Graphics won the contract in January after about a year of conversations with Disney. Run by the Blaeveot couple, the company will produce 15 different books over a three-year period.

Originally, they thought the process would be simple.

"We thought we'd get them out by the end of January, but the people at Disney said it's not going to happen," said Rebecca Blaeveot.

The design process was a lot of back-and-forth, including learning how Disney's systems work and understand what rules surrounded using the characters.

"There's a big learning curve," said Emmanuel Blaeveot. "You can't just do what you want with Mickey's image."

According to Rebecca, they couldn't use the word 'Disney' in their book titles, but they could use the logo.

"You wouldn't see Mickey Mouse with a beer," said Emmanuel, describing the regulations they had to follow.

Once they got the go-ahead, the small team got to work and did a quick print run.

"Within about two days we'd done a small run," said Rebecca.

That run has already all sold and 150 more are printing right now. It takes about a week to print that many.The books have gone to Texas, California, Wisconsin and further. Tactile Vision Graphics Inc. has the North American distribution license.

Despite the success, the Blaeveots haven't hired anyone extra to work in the shop yet.

"What we do not want to do it grow too fast and end up in trouble financially," said Rebecca."We want to be very careful how we grow the company based on this success."