The porn industry is notoriously customer focused. Even the tiniest niche of sexual craving -- from shoes to short folk -- is served by dedicated Web sites and magazines. But a large section of the adult population hasn't been able to access this array of eye-popping material: the blind and visually impaired. Now a Toronto-based photographer has created a book of tactile erotic images paired with Braille descriptions that will allow blind people to indulge in this guilty pleasure.
Lisa J. Murphy's touchy-feely journey began in 2007, when she volunteered at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and learned how to create raised animal pictures -- whose outlines and features can be felt by hand -- for visually impaired kids' books. It wasn't long before she realized that as well as teaching children about the shape of a cow, these skills could be used to satisfy more, well, grown-up tastes.
"There are no books featuring tactile pictures of nudes for adults," Murphy, 35, told AOL News. Murphy has no hang-ups, as the 17 images in her book "Tactile Mind" -- which range from naked women disco dancing to men decked out as lusty robots -- prove. "I've never seen anything dirty about sex," she says. "We all came from somewhere."
Unfortunately, creating those pictures is a long and expensive process. Creating one page takes about 50 hours of labor. That explains why the limited-edition book sells for $225, although individual plates can be bought for $25.
I’m sure there are a select few out there who (stupidly) still pay for porn, but can you imagine having to pay $225 bucks for a Playboy? Because that’s essentially what’s going on here. That’s just supply and demand, I suppose. I guess the blind have no other options (other than audio), so it’s either this or nothing right now. What I don’t understand are some of the images described in this article. “Men decked out as lusty robots.” I mean, these people are blind; they’re not sexually-deviant freaks.
I’m not sure how this whole thing is going to play out, but I am sure that Lisa Murphy just became a hero to the blind. Even if this whole “porn for the blind” thing is an epic fail, at least someone out there has the blind community’s interests at heart. Gotta love the porn industry, always aiming to please.
