E-book will help visually impaired children understand the universe

An e-book for children with visual impairments is soon to be available at Apple’s iBook store as a free download on your iPad. Titled Reach for the Stars: Touch, Look, Listen, Learn, the e-book is inspired by a new Hubble Space Telescope image of the colourful 30 Doradus Nebula – a giant star-forming region.

“We want to convince children that science is cool, is fun and that anybody could be a scientist, if they want to,” says the astronomer Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, and the inspiration behind this project. Reach for the Stars shows the blind “that there are no barriers to scare you. And technology is improving so fast that we are sure you will be able to learn and to do things. Things are becoming more reachable,” says Sabbi.

Sabbi and her team have created the book in partnership with SAS, a company based in North Carolina that develops analytics software to help people analyse and visualise data. But it’s not just for the visually challenged – anyone can read the book.

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