The Story Behind Dotty Greetings

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At 9 years old I started to lose my sight; we then found out that this was due to a brain tumour pressing on my optic nerve. I had to have the tumour removed but to get to it the surgeons had to cut through my optic nerve. This meant I was left completely blind in my left eye & only 5% vision in my right eye. I can only see light & colour I can’t see detail.  So, this meant I struggled in a main stream school setting. So, after losing my sight I then moved to a School for blind children called St Joseph Clarke Whilst at this school I learned  braille, which opened my world up to a lot more possibilities that I thought I would never do again, such as reading and writing.

 After getting settled into my new school & my new way of life I thought things would be plain sailing from there. However, life had other plans & at age 13 I was diagnosed with another 2 more brain tumours but these ones were sadly cancerous. I had to go through months of treatment that would consist of chemo & radiation treatment. This time period was extremely difficult & exhausting, I honestly don’t think I would have got through it without the support of my mum. The support & love she showed me is something I will forever be grateful for. Over the years I have always loved the sentiment of my family & friends giving me greetings cards for different occasions but I always wished that I could read it myself without having any help. Also being about to see the design without it being described to me. I wished that there was a way that I could feel the design & be able to visualise it. This got me thinking about designing my own greeting cards that were more accessible. As I learnt braille & still had my own Perkins brailler I started to created picture using my brailler. At the beginning I struggled to map out the designs in my mind, which then led me to printing high contrast images with thick black lines on white paper, to use as a sort of stencil. From there I was able to work out the angles & shapes to create the image using the keys on my brailler. I felt it was important to not only have an image you could feel but for anyone to also be able to see what the picture was. Therefore, creating a card that was accessible for everyone. As time went on, I found creating the designs easier, although it still takes time when creating a new image, I find the process much smoother now.

I always take customer feedback very seriously as I want my cards to not only work for me but for everyone. One piece of feedback I received was about one of my braille cards that included some stick-on gems, the customer was thrilled that they could not only feel the braille but could also feel a different texture of the gem. This has led me to incorporate more gems on across my range of braille cards.

As my business started to grow, I began to think about others was to make my cards more tactile, colourful & fun for a wider range of abilities. This made me think about what I find fun, which as anyone who knows me, knows I love everything Lego related. So, I started to think was there a way that I could merge my love of Lego with my greeting’s cards. Hence our Lego card range was born.