19-year-old Louis Moorhouse from Bradford, England is over one third of the way to raising the necessary funds to make his dream come true of having the world of Doctor Who at his fingertips.

Blind since he was 18 months old, Louis has enjoyed a world of information and adventure via Living Paintings books. The books helped Louis learn Braille by making it possible for him to ‘see’ in his own way the all-important illustrations in picture books.

The Touch to See books include raised tactile pictures accompanied by atmospheric, educational and entertaining audio guides. The audio guides, often narrated by famous people, help fingers explore the tactile images, tell the stories of the pictures and describe their features. In this way, the senses of touch and hearing combine to make up for the missing sense of sight. Colour images included in the books enable them to be shared with sighted friends, family and classmates.

A big fan of the show since he was young, it is Louis’ goal to fully meet the weird and wonderful Doctor Who characters, aliens, monsters and devices he is unable to see.

“If I could sum up what I think is the most important thing about my campaign I would ask a sighted person to just imagine – close your eyes and now imagine you can’t open them again. This is how it is and now you want to read a book or watch Doctor Who. How are you going to do that? How important is reading a book to you? As a sighted person how would you feel if that was taken away from you and you couldn’t read anymore?”

Louis asked Living Paintings if they would consider creating Doctor Who Touch to See books which would help blind people like him enjoy and engage with the show on a whole new level. The publisher agreed but they don’t have the money to do this so Louis set up a Crowdfunder page to help make this possible.

Louis has so far raised over £5,000 toward his goal of £15,000 for Living Paintings to write and produce three Doctor Who Touch to See books to be sent out across the UK to blind youngsters like Louis — completely free of charge.

The team behind Doctor Who have given the go-ahead for the praiseworthy project and Derek Jacobi, who played Professor Yana/The Master in the Series 3 Doctor Who episode Utopia, has leant his video support.

Help made Louis’ dream come true. Louis’ Crowdfunder page can be found here.