What Makes Erotica Accessible for the Blind?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is one touchable picture worth? Tactile Mind, a handmade book consisting of 17 2-dimensional nude images is now available from Toronto photographer Lisa Murphy for $225 (CAD). You do the math.

I champion accessible books of all kinds, so I applaud this one. I bet it gets more media hype than actual sales, though. News stories tout it as “Braille porn” but the staggering price and hand-crafted construction, albeit with plastic thermoform paper and spiral binding, make it more of an art book. Each copy is numbered and signed by the artist, who volunteers at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).

Like many accessible technologies, it sounds like a clever concept but economies of scale put it beyond the reach of most blind people. A thousand sexy words are cheaper.

Here’s how the story was spun by flashnews.com:

TORONTO (Wireless Flash – FlashNews) – Porn has never been so touching – especially now that there’s a Braille version for the blind.

Photographer Lisa J. Murphy has just created Tactile Mind, a book of nude images sculpted on thermoform plastic pages – the same material used in Braille paper.

All the lines, ridges, and crevices of the body parts are touchable, so the pictures can be enjoyed by the visually impaired. To fully feel the erotica, they each come with an accompanying description in Braille.

Murphy, who’s a volunteer at the Canadian National Institute For The Blind, calls the book a “labor of love.”

Each sexy image took her about 50 hours to sculpt so it would be interpreted accurately by the sightless.

Her tactile creations include a woman’s naked breasts, an uncircumcised penis and testicles, and a shaved vagina.

None of her art seems to be getting lost in translation because in her words, “Blind folks say my work is good. Wink, wink.”