Sensitivity Reading for Blind Characters

People are intrigued by blindness and blind characters. And why shouldn’t they be? Like any character attribute, blindness, when done right, can give a character fabulous depth. Take Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Her blindness gave her unique challenges, but it also gave her unique strengths, as well as a perspective on the world sighted characters just don’t have. So many people are inspired and fascinated by Toph and characters like her, but so few writers have actual experience with blindness to know how to write blind characters. That’s where I come in.

I’ve been blind to varying degrees my entire life. Blindness is not a superpower, but neither is it a complete disabler. It is a challenge and a strength, and like any disability, it needs to be understood and normalized. Therefore, it needs to be represented correctly. Readers need to see accurate blind characters so that they do not fear and know how to act when they encounter a blind person in real life. Authors need to do their best in representing these characters so as to weave a believable story and establish trust between themselves and their readers. And this needs to happen across genres, so that readers of all ages, and especially children, can learn to treat blindness not with fear or disgust, but with the understanding that disability is just another facet of our unique and colorful lives.

Accessibility Testing

There’s a world of voracious readers out there, clamoring for more material. Unfortunately, accessing that material isn’t always easy, particularly for those with print disabilities. And the blind and visually impaired have a particular set of challenges to overcome: finding an accessible book app, finding books that are formatted for screen readers, accessing graphics via clear and concise alt text. There are so many things to pay attention to when trying to make your material accessible to the world. And I understand—that’s a lot to handle and keep track of. But don’t alienate your audience. You deserve to have them, and they deserve to have materials they can read and enjoy. Let’s work together to make your writing available to all.

Copyediting

When people think of editing, copyediting is typically the kind they think of. When I copyedit your material, I’ll comb through it by letter, correcting typos and misspellings and fixing errors in grammar and punctuation.

Line Editing

There are conflicting opinions on what exactly line editing is, but I prefer to interpret it as synonymous with substantive editing. With this service, I’ll take a look at your book line by line and make the writing clear while still preserving your style and voice. I’ll eliminate jargon and redundancies, fix sentence and paragraph shape so that information is presented logically, correct shifts in tense and perspective, and ensure that the pacing and tone work well with the events and information presented.

Developmental Editing

A developmental edit is meant to strengthen the plot and character elements of your book. I’ll read through your manuscript and make note of things like character inconsistencies and world-building weaknesses, and I’ll provide suggestions to fix or improve these things.

Manuscript Evaluation

This is less in depth than a developmental edit. I’ll read through your manuscript once and send you a report on it’s strengths and weaknesses. I’ll also include suggestions in my report for how to improve your manuscript.

Writing

As a long-time fantasy/sci-fi novelist, I'd be happy blogging, ghost writing, or developing other forms of creative content for you.