Police Forensics Team Salvage Blind Authors' Inkless Novel Pages

Blind author Trish Vickers wrote 26 pages of her novel's first chapter when her son noticed she was writing without ink. Her manuscript was saved however after they took it to the Dorset Police department. A forensic team there worked on it in their spare time, and after 5 months they were able to recover the lost pages. Vickers said: “I think they used a combination of various lights at different angles to see if they could get the impression made by my pen. I am so happy, pleased and grateful. It was really nice of them and I want to thank them for helping me out.”

Honest curiosity

[Anubis IV]

Sorry for the ignorance, but is it common for blind people to write at length using pen and paper? It strikes me as odd that someone would use a medium which they would not themselves be able to review later (excepting cases where review isn't necessary, such as for a short correspondence or the like). I'd have thought that a computer with a screen reader would be the preferred medium.

Re:Honest curiosity

[Kadagan AU]

My sister is blind, and has been for her whole life. She never writes by hand, and even if she writes her name the letters tend to be imperfect and disconnected. No one can fault her for it, but it's a challenge to maintain your place on the page. And she's not even completely blind, she has a very small amount of vision in one eye (she can mostly just see light and darkness).

If this woman is completely blind, I wouldn't expect too much detailed writing per page.. I can't imagine my sister getting more than a paragraph or so on a page if she were to try.

Re:Used a technique called "rubbing it with a penc

[SJHillman]

Not to mention how many times she could have revised it in the 5 months it took to recover. A 26 page paper was a lazy week (or mildly stressful weekend) in college.