Last night, a group of dedicated volunteers arrived at the National Braille Press not knowing much about Braille or the people who use it. But thanks to Allison, our volunteer leader for the evening, we left knowing quite a bit more. As Allison said, "Thinking about using Braille and going through life without the use of your sight makes you look at the world in a whole different way." 
After hearing a bit about the history of Braille and the National Braille Press, our volunteers got to work collating the book Froggy Eats Out by Jonathan London. The National Braille press received a bulk donation of the book from the publisher, then translated it into Braille. To enable a sighted person and a Braille reader to read the book together, National Braille Press cuts off the binding of the book, then creates a clear plastic page with Braille printed on it to go over each page of the book. In this way, a Braille reader can read the book while the sighted person can still see the page beneath the Braille (and the pictures!)
Our job was to put the book back together, with both the Braille and printed pages. Although collating is a very simple task, since the National Braille Press has an exact number of copies of the printed book, volunteers had to pay constant attention to make sure they did not skip or add extra pages. National Braille press staff members dedicated their time to recheck each book volunteers assembled.
During this hard work, the group stopped for pizza, and a few volunteers read the book aloud while we ate. It was rewarding to imagine the books we had carefully assembled being read aloud at bedtime in hundreds of households across the country!
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