When my youngest daughter was 2, we were at one of her siblings’ marching band shows. The band was standing on the field while the director talked about the band program. She loved watching them march, so she was frustrated when the director kept talking, and the band wasn’t marching. She kept yelling, “March! March!”
Eventually, she ran out of patience. She stood up, said, “I go do it,” and started down the bleachers toward the field to direct them herself! (We brought her back and told her she needed to wait, and that they would start again soon.)
I understand that feeling, though. I love TTRPGs. I love the stories, the shared experience, the monsters, the rule mechanics, the artwork, and everything else. But I get frustrated with how inaccessible it can be in so many ways. So I keep yelling, “Be accessible! Be accessible!” And there’s a lot of talk, but not much marching.
So I take my cue from my daughter. “I go do it.” And there’s nobody to pull me back and make me sit down, because we’ve waited fifty years, and that’s too long to sit on the bleachers.
In the fifty-year history of the hobby, no TTRPG book has ever been published in braille. Until now. We transcribed the 5e System Reference Document into braille and made the files available for free, along with a tutorial to encourage other publishers to make their products available in braille. To give that some momentum, I transcribed products from five other publishers who expressed interest, including T.M. van Dalen RPG, Anja Svare Productions, Alan Tucker Games, Jeff Stevens Games, and Sly Flourish. (The first three of those are part of the bundle below!) |