Through her experience, she became interested in creating books for people with these kinds of complex additional needs. She began to look for organisations specialising in this area but quickly identified that this is a gap in the literature and publishing industry meaning that children with complex additional needs have extremely limited access to enjoyable and engaging books.

“I want teachers or parents to be able to pull a book of the shelf and sit down and read it to their child or pupil with complex needs in the same way as any other teacher or parent would. I want this to be happening in the little gaps and cracks in a school day, at bedtime, with siblings, whilst waiting in the doctor’s waiting room…For this to happen these children need access to fun and engaging books.” Ailie Finlay

Children with additional needs can enjoy a good story just like their peers, but they need books that are designed to take their additional needs into account and these books simply weren’t available. For pupils to access stories, teachers were adapting picture books for them through modifications to create sensory additions, adding symbols and editing text.

To begin addressing this issue, Ailie founded My Kind of Book – an organisation that promotes good practice in publishing accessible books, creates inclusive books and campaigns for a greater understanding of accessibility when it comes to picture books for young people with additional needs. Ailie realised that while she could begin to address this need through her organisation, if she wanted to make bigger changes to the literature and publishing industry she would need more data to support her campaigning and advocacy.

Data from Bold, Clear, Sensory and Strong full report p.2

Ailie applied to become a Connected Innovator through Creative Informatics, with a proposal to gather data and expertise from teachers and groups working in special schools. These people were the experts in what suited the needs of young people and were already making necessary adaptations to suit their own pupils or dependents. Ailie’s project sought to capture this experience and knowledge and create a toolkit to help authors, illustrators and publishers to create books with increased accessibility for children with additional needs.

Ailie worked with Edinburgh based data science company effini to create an online survey for teachers in special schools across the UK who were working with children and young people from three to eighteen years of age, with a wide range of complex needs including profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD), sensory impairments and children on the autism spectrum. The teachers were asked general questions about their use of picture books, sent a set of four recently published and well-reviewed books, then asked how they used and/or adapted these books for their pupils.

Data visualisation from Bold, Clear, Sensory and Strong full report p.10

The project captured a huge amount of qualitative data representing the frustration that teachers felt with the choice of books available and highlighting the fact that they were having to make adaptations to books to suit the needs of their pupils.

The full results of this survey and data collection exercise can be seen in the published report Bold, Clear, Sensory and Strong – Creating Accessible Picture Books. The report also contains recommendations and a toolkit for authors, illustrators and publishers. The report and its findings clearly highlight the need for publishing to look at accessibility in a different way and the recommendations can be summarised as bold, clear, sensory and strong. Ailie found the process of working with data scientists to be incredibly valuable, with the Connected Innovator funding allowing her to access their expertise and create a resource to highlight a problem in the process of publishing for access needs.

Now that this report has been published, Ailie is focused on using it to campaign for mainstream publishers to create books that will suit a range of complex needs, and using the recommendations to continue her own publishing and services through My Kind of Book.