Photo: Maya Bocheva
Bulgaria is one of the few countries in the world with comics accessible to visually impaired people. We already have two accessible comics printed in Braille, recorded with the voices of actors and volunteers, thanks to the financial support of the National Culture Fund. The idea engine of the project is , and the manager – Dima Nasteva.
In front of Radio Sofia, they explained the difficulties they faced in creating comics for the blind.
“It was very difficult for me to imagine the comic, which is an extremely visual art. For us, as people who are lucky enough to see, unlike Ivan and others like him, it’s most normal for me to turn away a picture, see all the crazy stories that the comic tells, and I asked Ivan how I was going to explain all this to him and blind people respectively. He told me – it’s very simple, we sit down and describe in words what we see,” explained Dima Nasteva.
She begins to describe all the details she sees in the comics, and then, together with Ivan, they search for the most suitable words so that the blind can touch what the sighted can see.
In the beginning, they started with two comics, but through the project “Comic Book – Access to Culture for the Visually Impaired”, they have already described 10.
They admit that it was extremely difficult at first.
“We wrote to American publishers, contacted Bulgarian artists and comic book illustrators – it was a great idea and you hit a wall – no response from anywhere. We were three days away from submitting the project and had no comics to work on. Then acquaintances connected us with a great author – Maya Bocheva, who provided us with her two comics completely free of charge. This is the reason why we have only two comics on the first project”, shared Ivan Karastoyanov.
On April 20 and 21, they held a workshop at the National Community Center for the Blind “Louis Braille 1928”, where they played an interactive game between the sighted and the blind, with the goal of creating a comic book together, which is already a fact and written on paper.
Dima Nasteva and Ivan Karastoyanov also create accessible art for everyone, bringing together everything they work on. They are also currently adapting two short films for the blind.
“This is an extreme shortage in Bulgaria – for the blind to touch the cinema. We are launching with two films as the copyright situation is very difficult. In June, we will make the premiere, and in this initiative we really want to attract people who are involved in art in order to provoke a debate”, said Dima Nasteva.
They are also working on creating a theater performance together with visually impaired children.
Details can be heard in the sound file.
The publication was worked on by: Polina Nacheva
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