Interview with Namita Jacob

“My son is nonverbal and profoundly involved. But I can identify and explain what every movement and every sound means. I know when he wants to be lifted, when he's happy, or when he wants to lie down. But what your books did was help me see his personality. I learned what he thinks is funny, and that he loves action stories, wild fights, and shipwrecks. Watching him interact with the books helped me really see my child.”

This moving testament was shared by a mother whose son has profound cerebral palsy. Her child was able to discover the wonder of reading when she connected with a non-profit organization called the Chetana Trust, founded and directed by Dr. Namita Jacob.

On 13th April 2026, during the IBBY press conference at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy, it was announced that Namita Jacob from India was one of the two winners of the 2026 IBBY-iRead Outstanding Reading Promoter Award. With over 35 years of experience, Namita Jacob is a leading expert in disability inclusion, working with children and adults with complex disabilities—including those with visual, hearing, or physical impairments, cerebral palsy, and attention deficit.

Through the Chetana Trust, which she founded in 2004, Namita has created over a thousand high-quality, accessible picture books that fill a critical gap in the market. She firmly believes that books are far more than just educational tools; they are gateways to joy, imagination, and self-discovery. By delivering these titles directly to library members and conducting inclusive reading sessions in spaces like cancer care homes, public parks, and libraries, Namita and her team successfully connect their creations with the children who need them most.

Beyond the physical books she has produced, Namita views the creation of a community as equally important. Within this network, writers, illustrators, designers, librarians, parents, and facilitators all work in unison to build an inclusive ecosystem—and a society—where people with disabilities can truly thrive.

Namita does not view disability as something that needs to be "corrected." Instead, she sees an impairment as a profound opportunity to understand how each brain finds its unique solution to enable learning and interaction. For her, the role of a facilitator is to provide the experiences that allow a child space and opportunity to develop these pathways, opening their mind in the best way possible. Through these books, she aims to bring children with disabilities the exact same gifts enjoyed by all other children: the freedom to imagine, discover themselves, aspire, dream, question, and bring about change for themselves.

Namita’s journey in the field of disability inclusion and advocacy began years ago during her college days, while volunteering in an urban slum. It was there that she encountered a young boy with cerebral palsy for the very first time. Witnessing his hidden intelligence sparked a lifelong curiosity that altered the course of her life. While tackling such an immense, systemic problem initially felt daunting, Namita eventually realized something that guides her work to this day: people are the resources. When we choose to view the world through this lens of human potential, anything is possible.

iRead: What were you doing when you found out about the news that you won the IBBY-iRead Outstanding Reading Promoter Award?

Namita: When the award winners were announced, I was attending another event to receive an award for my work over the years. Although I couldn’t watch the IBBY press release myself, the rest of the team was tuned in.

To be honest, we were honored just to be nominated; I never expected anything beyond that. But during the event I was attending, my phone started to vibrate and light up—again and again. I was flooded with messages. It was a completely unbelievable moment. For a small team of three here in Chennai to receive this kind of validation from an international body, it really is like winning an Oscar in our field.

iRead: That’s very nice to hear. Can you tell us a little bit more about Chetana Trust?

Namita: We are a non-profit organization based in Chennai, a city in southern India. We champion the right to literacy and the right to leisure for people with disabilities. I think it's something that doesn't receive enough of respect and attention. Our work goes far beyond simply distributing books: we strive to build an inclusive community. We hope every person, regardless of how they perceive the world, can live a fulfilling life with the support of a community that has the right knowledge, skills and empathy.

Strategically speaking, our approaches are threefold. First, we improve access to quality resources. To achieve this, we make high-quality, accessible learning and development materials widely available. Second, we make good practices available, visible, and viable. Third, we create systems change that lasts.

Our core principle is to let the people we serve guide and inspire our work. We always consult end users when designing books or organizing reading sessions. We also collaborate closely with local communities, professionals and parents to keep our initiatives sustainable. Our organization may not exist forever, but we aim to spread our ideas and practices widely, so more people will carry on this work. That is our ultimate goal.

iRead: What types of disabilities do you work with?

Namita: We primarily focus on people with print disabilities. This means they cannot access regular books easily. Some struggle to turn pages due to physical impairments; some have visual impairments or total blindness; others have language processing disorders or intellectual disabilities, making standard reading materials too difficult for them.

We also work with people that have complex impairments, for example they would have visual impairment plus hearing impairment, or visual impairment plus physical impairment.

We address children with attention deficit, too. Or rather we have seen that our books hugely benefit children with attention deficit.

iRead: What is the origin of Chetana Trust?

Namita: We were established in 2004. The Trust was founded out of my anger. I worked in many organizations and with children with pretty complex needs. I saw that a lot of care is very focused on therapy. While therapy is important, I also believe that children need to play and have early access to books. Yet except for the books that I had with me, there were none. This was hugely frustrating.

I remember there was this little girl that I knew since she was a baby. When she was just six months, she would crawl to a pile of books, pick her favorite one, sit down on my lap and signal to me to read it to her. That moment made me reflect: so many children have shelves of books to enjoy, while children with disabilities are lucky to have even one. How nonsensical, how unfair is this world?

My city is home to three excellent children’s book publishers. They make wonderful books. And there is a growing and vibrant community of writers, illustrators, and thinkers. But there were still no books for children with disabilities. There were books about them, but not for them.

At first, I tried hard to convince publishing houses to take on the challenge, offering to co-create or support in any way possible. But it was not to be. And so it meant that I, who am not a writer, an illustrator, or a designer, and therefore the last person who should be constructing books for children—am doing this now.

I didn’t think of establishing a Trust at first, yet it seemed that when presented as an organization, people were more willing to listen to you and work with you.

In the early years, I tried many different ways to realize my ideas in different settings. And they never worked. And finally, about ten years ago, I had two brilliant volunteer interns who were both educators. They then suggested to me, “come on, let's do a library. Let’s show by doing.”

With that encouragement, thirty books and ten children, we’ve started this library. The first five or six years of the library was a massive scrambling act trying to build a collection of books. All the books were handcrafted, so each one could take many months to design, illustrate, and test to make sure the visuals are beautiful, and the interaction actually work.  

iRead: As someone with no previous knowledge of making books. How did you first start the process? What was your learning curve like?

Namita: I did what any person like me with no skills does. I copied. I looked at good Indian children's books and thought about how I would adapt it. Our earliest efforts like these taught us how to think about creating books.

We picked five popular titles and tried to understand what the authors and illustrators did well, and how they did it for sighted children. Then, we thought about how we could replicate that experience for a child who perceives or interacts with books differently.

After that we started to create our own books using what we’ve learned. I went out and found very talented, young designer to work with.

iRead: Compared to regular books, what do you need to do to make books more accessible for children with disabilities?

Namita: When we started, it was our dream to create a universally accessible book. That means anybody should be able to benefit from the book. What I quickly realized was if I try to solve everything for everybody in a single version of a book, I end up with a rather ugly and very expensive book that covers limited topics.

Over time, we've come to understand that if we solve about 60% to 80 % for each disability, create a ground frame, you could have an external add-on that solves the last bit to enable access. An example is the font size. If I select the correct font and follow certain rules around the placement of the text, people need bigger text can use a magnifier to solve the last mile.

There are some basic guidelines that you can follow to increase the number of children who can access a book. For example, a larger, well-spaced non serif font can help children with low vision read more easily. It will also help children with visual processing difficulties and children who don’t have a disability as such, but struggle with reading for other reasons, thicker pages, though more expensive, make it easier for many to turn a page - not just the child but also a grandparent who could be reading to the child.

With most of our books we ensure we use clear outlines and contrasts in imagery so that children with low vision can see, but also add the tactile features for children with more severe visual impairment to touch. We find this also helps children with attention deficit and draws all children to the books!

Similarly, if I use a certain quality of paper and plan the edges of my book correctly, people in need can add on a simple paper clip and an attachment to help turn a page. Then a child with a physical impairment is supported.

Imagery is the same. I can do a certain amount of tactile imagery and overlay it transparent on the text. The book I’m holding now, you can see an image on the page, but you can’t see that the river is tactile.

I can show you another example. We recently brought out a book called The Game of Sticks. You can see there are some sticks here, but what you can’t really see is that there are more sticks here on the tree, which can only be found by hands. Tactile elements help not just the blind child but also a child with low vision who can now have a second way to confirm what they have seen.

And you can see the pages are a little thicker, so I can simply add a tab that allows you to turn the page easily. The print is large. There is braille on top, but it’s invisible. Children with autism and attention deficit often love having their hand on our pages because they get more feedback. They are engaging with the story and the characters by touching them.

So we've worked out this core set of things that we can put into the creation of the book, then the additional level of problem solving can happen outside.

iRead: How did you find illustrators and designers to work with? Did they have the experience of working with people with disabilities before?

Namita: One of the things we do is run the National Tactile Book Competition. It’s open to anyone in the country, and we ask them to either adapt an existing book or create their own. This year, we received 49 entries from all across India. To complete the competition, participants must pass through multiple stages, and we provide several master classes and one on one mentorship along the way.

After six months of working closely with the participants, often we will end up with marvelous books and also collaborators and partners for life.

iRead: How about the stories? Who write them?

Namita: They are born in different ways. We find that most participants in the National Tactile Book Competition actually prefer to write their own story. And in that group of competitors, there's almost always children's book writers.

Other than working with writers, we also write a lot of the books by ourselves. Many themes are suggested by parents or emerge from conversations with children.

Another way we reach out to people is through a long-term partnership with Stella Maris College here in Chennai. Every year, we bring our library to the literature department and conduct an orientation and they participate in some creation activities with us. Once this connection is established, many of these students go on to support our other services.

iRead: How many of these accessible books have you made so far?

Namita: I think we’ve created around 300 titles. And for each title, we often have multiple copies. So I would say over a thousand books - in the early days we made and gave away, and never really counted!

I would also like to stress the key philosophy of ours when making our books. As I’ve mentioned, there are all these elements of making a book more accessible. That’s a base requirement. However, we want more. We want our books to be beautiful so that our books pull children together over a shared love for a story. We want a book for children with disabilities just as good as any books for all children. What do good books do? They are beautiful and fun; they allow room for open interpretation, they help children discover who they are, they spark imagination…… We want our books to do all that as well.

Let me give you an example. This book is called The Judge Monkey. Please look at this page. Normally, when you depict animals for children with print disabilities, you should show the whole animal so that when readers touch the tactile illustration, they know exactly what it is. But here on this page, there is only half of an animal. The children will still know it’s a monkey because we have shown the whole monkey and the monkey’s tail—which is its distinctive feature—several times already. But why do we only see half of the monkey? Is he hiding somewhere? Now, we are triggering questions and provoking more active interaction. We haven't made everything predictable. You need to give children the skills and confidence to figure things out on their own. That's what storybooks, when designed well, can achieve.

One of the first talks I give to illustrators is about how to illustrate for people who cannot see. Illustration is inherently visual. So, when creating tactile books, how do you preserve beauty, wonder, imagination, and curiosity, while still providing enough structure for recognition? It is a very fine balance. That is why it is vital to always test our work with children. Every single time we share a book with them, we pick up on something new, notice a hidden detail, learn a lesson, or correct a flaw. That is how we get better.

iRead: That’s an important point. Having a disability should never mean receiving a lower-quality product or experience. These children deserve the very best we can offer.

Namita: Most books created by teachers for children with disabilities are typically used in classrooms as functional tools for specific educational purposes, like language development or skill teaching. While these are important goals, our approach is different. We focus on helping children discover who they are and how they think—giving them opportunities to decode imagery and find meaning beyond the concrete. We open doors to so many things that are far more marvelous.

iRead: Can you tell us a little bit more about ARM library?

Namita: ARM stands for Accessible Reading Materials. It’s a physical library that contains all the books we have. In this library, anyone can come in and read, but we have limited borrowing members. To qualify as a borrowing member, you need to be a child who has print disability. 

One of the things we realized very early on is that transportation for children with disabilities is a major hurdle. Expecting children to physically travel to a library space places a heavy burden on families, so we decided early to bring the books directly to them. We developed an accessible, online, searchable database that children and their families can use. We also conduct interactive reading sessions in schools and neighborhoods so children can discover what they like. Once they request their favorite titles, we deliver them. The school usually serves as the delivery point, and the children then carry the books home.

Apart from borrowing members, anybody can come into the library and read. All our services are free.

For the first few years, we only delivered books to children to read by themselves. Over time we started thinking that we want to engage more with the children. We need to do more demonstration so we can help them to think beyond the book. This process also teaches us how to facilitate in different situations and with different children. Then we can pass on facilitation skills to others. So we started setting up sessions here in our city.

We have several centers in the city that provide services to children with disabilities. We go to those centers every week and do sessions with the children and then we give them the books that they’ve selected, and they get to take them home.

We also bring our books to cancer care homes, where children stay during their medical treatment. Because patients come and go, this is a constantly changing group of children. We also host storytelling sessions in city parks and public libraries. These public engagements are generally how people discover our work.

iRead: Apart from working in Chennai, do you have ways to reach children in other cities in India?

Namita: Yes. For example, we work with the Free Libraries Network, which connects all the libraries in the country. We once did a session at their invitation for all the partner libraries nationwide. That first training gave us two big insights. First, that librarians are incredibly passionate about ensuring every child has the right to benefit from the library space. Second, we will not be able to easily keep up with the demand, as we can only produce a few titles every year.

Consequently, we started trying to figure out facilitation techniques that can still work even when the book you hold in your hand is not accessible. What can you do outside of the book, around the book, or along with the book to bring the story to the child, make a read-aloud meaningful, and achieve the same goals for everybody? What could you do differently? For one whole year, we challenged ourselves to conduct sessions with books that were not adapted across different settings and readers with a range of access difficulties. At the end of the year, we did another training sharing our learning with our colleagues.

This year, we plan to try to create inclusive book sets that we can share with our partners as well. By working like this with national library movement or national service networks for people with disabilities, we can grow inclusive communities quickly and effectively.

iRead: In the nomination material, it says your work has reached children in more than 100 countries. How did you achieve this?

Namita: That’s through our online library. We started it during the pandemic as a response to the inability to send books to children anymore. We researched a little and came across this organization called SIL that runs the Bloom Library network. It's a free service that allows you to construct really simple books.

This platform allowed us to customize how we want to show our books. We could add image descriptions, add voice to the text and so on to enable access. And when we encountered some issues, the platform’s team was very responsive. They gave us an enterprise subscription that allowed us to make our features better. They were really marvelous and have continued to support us long after the pandemic.

Through this platform, suddenly our readership has jumped countries, there were people all over the world accessing the books. Now we have readers across 136 countries with 5600+ downloads.

Now we are also trying to do print version of the online books we’ve made. Here is an example. Children with the physical book can listen to the online picture description at the same time, especially when there is no one available to give them guidance.

iRead: And I’ve read that you also make assistive devices?

Namita: Yes, our role is to develop the problem into a brief that an engineer can respond to, then staying available to them as they design and test the product.

The first device we worked on is called Aditi. Children with profound physical impairment are not able to turn pages even with help of page turners that we often use. To read independently, they need to access the books on a computer, but to do that, if they are not able to use voice activation, they need to use an adapted mouse. Aditi was a switch that could flex to meet the capacity of the child, however slight or however uncontrolled their movement. Later when we developed our online catalogue, our members could browse and select their books thanks to this access tool!

The second thing that is more closely connected with books and still holds a very high place in our heart is the Tactograph. Prof Anil Prabhakar, a faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (and my husband!) designed a low-cost machine that helps create tactile outlines in a cheap and effective way. It uses Fevicol or white glue and a syringe, so running costs are really low!

This machine allows you to upload images and draw want you want. It creates a very beautiful level of thickness and rise. With this machine, we are able to create simple and clear outlines consistently. So for people who don't have great hand skill, this machine allows them to reproduce many of our books simply by following our instructions. We hope now that many of the libraries and our partner organizations across the country could acquire this machine as an additional tool to make creating books easier for them. Then if we upload images with the instructions that the machine can read, then all our partners have to do on their side is prepare the pages and click a button to print.

iRead: So now all the books you make are free for people to download and use?

Namita: We have two versions available. One is the print version, which meets low-vision standards but does not have tactile features; however, users can make the tactile parts themselves. Alternatively, we have created books with the tactile features already included, which can be purchased directly from us.

iRead: What impact have you seen from the work you have done?

Namita: One of the things we do regularly is get feedback from the families of the members who borrow our books. This feedback is how we learn whether what we are doing is having the impact we want. What impact do we want? We want children who imagine, discover themselves, aspire, dream, question, and bring about change for themselves. This is our goal. The question is: do our books and our facilitation make these things happen?

Yesterday, we had a group of children visit the library for the first time in two years, and we had a chance to sit and chat with their parents. We asked them what it has meant to them to have their children be members of our library. I remember one parent saying, “You brought reading into our home.” When parents have children with disabilities, they often don’t think of reading as being possible. Another parent said that earlier her child had no friends but now when her child brings the books home, the neighborhood children see our cheerful Chetana bags and come over to read together. Over time, she has acquired friends.

I also remember a mom from the groups we work with, who has a child with profound and complex disabilities, sharing this with me. I will read it out: “My son is nonverbal and profoundly involved. But I can identify and explain what every movement and every sound means. I know when he wants to be lifted, when he's happy, or when he wants to lie down. But what your books did was help me see his personality. I learned what he thinks is funny, and that he loves action stories, wild fights, and shipwrecks. Watching him interact with the books helped me really see my child.”

I think that is a resounding, marvelous, and powerful statement.

iRead: Although you were not involved in the book-making industry before establishing the Trust, you always believed in the power of reading. Did you grow up with books? Can you tell us a little bit more about your childhood?

Namita: I grew up in this city Chennai. I had a very typical childhood with lots of time outdoors. I loved books and is raised by a mom who reads voraciously. She's never far from a book. So I did grow up kind of surrounded by stories and reading.  

Interestingly, we also had a lot of Russian and Chinese publications, so my childhood was full of wonder about those countries. It was a time when you never saw any foreigners, but through the pages of these books, I got to know different countries.

iRead: What did you study in college?

Namita: I studied Psychology, which was enormously helpful. In my day, a degree in Psychology included genetics, physiology, human development and learning and all kinds of other subjects. When I finally decided that I wanted to understand disability in greater depth, I already had a very good grounding. My deep respect for and understanding of the brain and the role of senses come from that grounding in Psychology.

I think instead of seeing disability as something that needs to be corrected, you can see an impairment as an opportunity to understand how the brain finds its way to learning. As a facilitator, your job is simply to ensure that a person gets all the opportunities and experiences that allow them to function, opening their mind in the best way possible.

iRead: How did you first become interested in working with children and people with disabilities?

Namita: While I was studying Psychology in college, I worked in a nearby urban slum. Because a lot of the parents had never been to school, they asked us to help their children with homework. So, once or twice a week in the evening, all the children would come together and we would help them out. One day, the headman's wife brought a little child who had cerebral palsy to be with us. I had never seen a child like him before.

On the second day, his parents sat him very close to me while I was teaching the other children. I was explaining simple mathematics using leaves and sticks. When I asked the other kids questions, that little boy would look at me and then glance at one of the correct answers. He did it for every question. To my amazement, I realized that he actually understood everything, even though we weren't even trying to teach him. I wondered, what is wrong with us?

That experience sparked my interest, and I looked up everything I could about cerebral palsy. That interest finally led me to learn more, and I fell in love with the field.

I think starting with this little boy, and then moving to the wider disability population, taught me a lot. Every child presents you with a unique combination of interests, personality, history, family dynamic, and impairment. As an educator, you need to design a solution that matches that particular child. I find that marvelous. It is so exciting because if you do it right, you can bring about a sea of change.

While I was in undergraduate and for a year after, I worked at a center teaching children with learning disabilities. I then decided that I really needed to study this, so I earned a degree in Special Education. During my studies, I visited a center for children who were deafblind. That was a truly fascinating experience. After graduating, I returned to work at that center in a residential capacity for nearly two years, which marked the true beginning of my career path in this field.

My time at the center was a huge learning experience for me. There, everything was turned upside down and inside out. When these kids were learning, they were doing something much deeper than just absorbing information. Whatever materials we gave them were tools for them them to give back to us, to guide us, and to instruct us in how to understand them. That lesson was profound, and it colored everything I did afterward. It became my focus to release a child's unique personality and way of thinking. How are you seeing the world? What do you notice in this? What do you think of this? Their responses tell me exactly what they are noticing, and show me how I can help them.

This became a marvelous tool and a massive shift in how I approached my job, how I viewed my role in supporting someone, and how I understood the importance of the material between us. Whatever material we put between us must be left open enough to allow children to reveal their interests, show me what captures their attention, and express how they are conceptualizing something. It must give them a chance to conceptualize for themselves, rather than being externally directed. Ultimately, I think those early years were far more important and changed me as a person much more than any of the degrees I earned.

iRead: I know you hold a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University.  What made you want to study in the U.S.?

Namita: Essentially, it was my desire to learn more so I could serve better. At that time, this center for the deafblind was the only school in our country providing this kind of service; therefore, the children came from all over the nation. I remember we had a little boy from Delhi, and our director was interested in starting a service there. Consequently, I was sent to Delhi to launch the new center.

While I was there, I kept pushing for children to be referred to us earlier, until one day a six-month-old baby arrived. He had cortical visual impairment. Soon after birth, he had suffered a stroke that affected one side of his body and interfered with his visual pathways. At that time, we had never heard of cortical visual impairment. We had only heard of cortical blindness, which basically meant to us that the child would never see.

However, as I interacted with him, I started noticing that when I did certain things in a specific way, he would respond visually. Yet, I didn’t have enough knowledge to support him further. At the same time, his parents kept asking me questions, such as whether coming more often would help him more. I had no answer to that either; I simply didn’t know enough and no one I asked - even the big child development college program, could help.

So, I applied for a scholarship to study early childhood education abroad, with a focus on sensory impairment. I completed my Master’s degree in the U.S. and had the opportunity to work there for about a year. Then, I was offered an opportunity to pursue a funded Ph.D., and I thought, why not? It was a great way to continue to learn varied ways of service delivery.

I always wanted to come back and work in India. I came back as soon as I completed by doctoral degree in 2002. I then worked across multiple different programs, and then in 2004 I founded the Trust. I continued to work with all the programs. With the Trust, I did things that I couldn’t achieve through existing partners.

iRead: Can you tell us a little bit more about the research you did for Ph.D.?

Namita: My research was about how mothers in rural south India make decisions to pursue certain services for their children. I've done a lot of work in community-based and hospital-based settings. So one of the things that we see is how late it is before children actually connect with educational rehabilitation services but how early it is that they reach medical services. Certainly, part of it is the design and the efficacy of the services themselves, their outreach, their visibility, and so on. But there is a conscious decision as well on the part of a family that they are trying to reach a service that they believe can hold a solution for what they perceive.

The research that I did was both qualitative and quantitative. It looked across approximately 65 families across villages in Tamil Nadu, trying to understand how they perceive education and learning separately from medical or rehabilitative interventions. Did they see going to school, getting an education, or accessing rehabilitative services as holding true value?

And perhaps through my research, I saw how much the perspective of parents—what they see in their children and what they expect from the support provided—really matters. This is why it doesn't matter how marvelous your services are; if a parent believes that change is not possible, they will not come. It's as simple as that.

And I think the research I did also influenced how I lead the Trust’s work. A massive part of what we do is working to build community awareness. The reason for this is that I found that even if some parents don’t believe that change is possible, if the community holds that belief or value, the parents will be nudged toward action. We want that to be a positive action—an action of hope, and one that will bring real change to children. Therefore, we try to raise a tremendous amount of awareness in the community about what happens when you give children truly excellent books and games.

iRead: When you were in the U.S., have you thought of staying there and not coming back?

Namita: I always knew that I wanted to come back and serve my country. If not my country at least in Asia.

I thoroughly enjoyed studying in the U.S.. It was marvelous to have access to so much information and thinking. But to work, I think there is nowhere like Asia. It gives you so many different challenges. I have served as a consultant and outreach person for Perkins School for the Blind in the U.S. in their international programs. For 15 years, I worked for them helping develop services across countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Vietnam, Indonesia and so many more. It’s been an exciting life.

iRead: It’s so touching to hear about your journey. I can really feel that this work is a true calling for you. You’ve dedicated your entire life to improving the lives of individuals with disabilities.

Thank you so much for talking to me today.

Find out more about Namita Jacob and her work at https://www.chetana.org.in/