WEST HILLS, Calif. – A good book can be an escape from reality. Tina Herbison and her husband Ralphael are helping tell thousands of stories right from their living room in West Hills.

Numerous disks and thumb drives contain about 15 audio books, and while the couple certainly saves on shipping costs that is not why the Herbisons are sending these out. While everyone is stuck at home, their files are going to people who are even more isolated, the blind and visually impaired.

“I just said to my husband, ‘I think we can do something for our patrons.’ We have flash drives that I had at an open house event that had information for our patrons, and I knew that I had abundant of them. So I knew that we could process these books and download them for our patrons,” says Tina.

What makes the Herbisons assembly line so efficient is that Tina and Ralphael both work at the Braille Institute in L.A. In fact, Tina is the Reader Services Manager and Ralphael the IT Services Administrator. Their marriage of books and technology has helped them ship 6,500 books to blind and visually impaired people all over Southern California.

“It really gets me excited, and gives me a lot of passion when I hear how grateful and how life-changing these books are to the library patrons,” says Ralphael.

Sondra Jolles is one of those visually impaired people the Herbisons have given the gift of reading to. She made her career as a fashion designer in New York, but today she is visually impaired and the pandemic has confined her to her Encino home.