Living in the future: A modern way to access God’s message

PUBLISHED - 24th October 2025

We’re always looking for ways we can better serve and reach our clients with the word of God, so that’s why we’d like to share an exciting new project with you…

For the past couple of years Torch Trust has been converting braille books from our library and resource catalogues, those which are available and suitable, so that they may be easily read on refreshable electronic braille displays. These devices are growing ever more popular – they display one or a few lines of braille at a time using pins which can be raised or lowered by mechanical means and thus the braille can be updated. In this way a whole book can be read on the device with the user pressing a button to scroll to the next line. 

Having completed the work of converting braille books, the next stage is to make them available to readers – and that’s where the “Braille SD Card” comes in. One of the easiest ways to transfer electronic braille books onto a braille display is for them to be on an SD memory card which can be inserted into the display. That’s why Torch is making such a card, containing thousands of converted books, available as a resource for clients. The many different genres of books on the card include hymn collections and even the latest edition of the NIVBible. We hope that this project will reach braille users across the UK, enabling access to so many wonderful Christian resources at no more than the press of a button. 

We’ve spoken to some of the people who have worked on this project, including Paul Wood, our Head of Technical Services: “This was a project Matthew Horspool and I started a number of years ago and I am grateful to Jake Kyle for taking it over the finish line. Encouraged by the cheaper braille displays that are available nowadays that can also take an SD card, it is great to be able to offer as much of our braille library as possible on one single memory card. Allowing braille readers access, at their fingertips, to the hundreds of Christian titles that contain rich nuggets of God’s messages to us all. No need any more to wait for the post to arrive with the next braille book from our library. Both Matthew and Jake have worked with our assortment of files from the various transcription software we have used past and present, which has been a challenge, and also used the valuable expertise of knowledgeable volunteers to develop a standard file format which we hope will be easily accessible.” 

We reached out to Matthew Horspool, braille expert and former Torch employee who said: “When I started work on this project, it was my vision that anyone who owned a braille display would be able to use it to access the entire Torch library catalogue, whether or not they had internet access. This release is a huge step forwards towards this vision and I am delighted to see it come to fruition.” 

Jake Kyle, our Transcription Developer added: “The project to convert thousands of Torch’s braille books for reading on electronic braille display had already begun when I joined Torch. It was a huge technical challenge but several braille readers had told us how useful it would be for them and so we believed it would be well worth the effort. I am especially excited about how it could help with inclusion in church life. To have the words to thousands of hymns and the whole Bible readily accessible should go a long way to enabling braille readers to participate fully in church services and Bible studies.” 

And finally a comment from our trustee Sheila Armstrong: “Some people have suggested that braille’s dying out, as they can’t imagine heaving all those heavy volumes around – the forty-three volumes of the Bible, for instance. But what if you could have thousands of braille books on something the size of a postage stamp or even smaller? Well, it’s now possible, thanks to little SD cards which can be popped into electronic braille readers. Up comes the book you’ve selected and if you finish it, there are many, many more where that one came from. I have a lot of time for St John’s comment about there not being enough space in the whole world if all the books had been written about our Lord Jesus’ time on earth. If I owned all the braille books you can fit on an SD card, the house would definitely not be big enough to contain them!”