Braille House opens bookshop after Annerley Community Bookshop closes

A charity that makes reading more accessible will partly resurrect a beloved community book shop after it was forced to close down in July. All profits will go to a good cause.

Sally Balwin is inviting everyone to come to the launch of the Braille House Shop on August 17. Picture: AAP/Richard Walker

A COMMUNITY devastated by the closure of a beloved community bookshop will have a new hub for bookworms just a short way down the road.

The Annerley Community Bookshop, a community hub for more than 20 years, closed in July due to falling sales and rising rents.

Annerley Community Bookshop forced to close

Why this suburb is a haven for the blind

Brisbane’s best bookstores

Annerley Community Bookshop donated their books and fit-outs to Braille House, a charity created by Lady Lamington in 1897 to ensure people who are blind had reading material.

It means the charity can open their own book shop with the same commitment to community, called Braille House Shop, on August 17, with a launch event from 9am-12pm.

SUBSCRIPTION OFFER: 50C A DAY FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS (MIN COST $15)

The charity’s general manager Sally Balwin could not bear the idea of the book shop being gone from Ipswich Rd forever.

The Annerley Community Bookshop donated its books to Braille House after it closed in July. Picture: AAP/Richard Walker

“Hearing that the shop was going to close, I immediately did an outreach and said, ‘No, you’re an institution, you’ve been here for 20 years. What can we do’,” she said.

Braille House has reached out to former volunteers and already has about seven interested in taking on their former roles in the new shop.

Ms Balwin said the Annerley Community Book Shop and Braille House were “all about literacy”.

“It’s about reading, whether you’re blind or sighted,” she said.

“The whole thing is to integrate braille and these resources and these supports into the mainstream, so that they’re not viewed differently.”

All book sales will fund the charity’s work translating books into braille and maintaining its library of braille books.

Ms Balwin said for 100 books a sighted person has access to, people who are blind have just three to five, but transcribing an average novel into braille costs about $3000.

“One of our missions is to make sure that a person who is blind or has low vision has just as much access to reading material as a sighted person does.

“We couldn’t produce Harry Potter for what you can buy it in the shop,” she said.

BRAILLE HOUSE SHOP OPENING HOURS

Monday to Friday, 9am to 12pm

Saturday, 9am to 12 or 1pm