TWIN VISION MAKING JOYS OF READING AVAILABLE TO THE BLIND : ORGANIZATION'S BOOKS WITH BRAILLE TOUCH LIVES.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It began as an offhand comment made by a young mother to a volunteer at a rummage sale in 1958 to raise funds for the blind.

Her two young sons were having problems understanding why their mother couldn't read children's books to them like other mothers read to their children, the young mother said.

They were still too small to understand the full scope of what it meant to be blind - that their mother would never be able to sit them on her lap and open a book to share the wonder of a children's story with them - line by line, word for word.

Jean Dyon Norris listened to the woman, and agreed. Yes, it was a shame. She also was a young mother, and every night she read to her three young children before she tucked them in their beds.

She couldn't imagine not being able to. It was one of the strongest bonds a mother could forge with her children, and it wasn't fair that this woman was being robbed of it because . . .

Because why, she wondered?

``I went home and took out one of my kids' books, and I Brailled out the words on Braille paper, sticking them in the binding opposite the written page each corresponded with,'' says Norris, who had learned Braille as part of her volunteer work with the blind.

``It took me all night. The next morning, I took the book over to her house and gave it to her. She was so thrilled she started reading to her children right then.''

Jean stuck around a few minutes to watch the scene, to feel it. You don't forget moments like that, not even 38 years later, she says today.

You don't forget a young mother finally being able to put her two little boys in her lap, and all of them able to follow the words together for the very first time.

The mother reading with her hands - the children with their eyes the words they could understand on the opposite page.

``That was the beginning of Twin Vision, and this is where it has led to,'' Norris says Monday, standing in the middle of a 1,300-square-foot maze of rooms on Oxnard Boulevard in Tarzana.

The sign out front says these are the working quarters for an organization called the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults. Don't believe it. That's just a front name.

The place is really a candy store. A candy store of knowledge for the blind. It's a library, a newspaper and a bookstore all rolled into one, and its reach today is into 40 countries and thousands of people all over the world.

It's the end result of what Jean Dyon Norris started 38 years ago when she met a young Van Nuys mother at a rummage sale who couldn't read books to her children.

``I took some other children's books I had transcribed . . . down to the Braille Institute where I was volunteering, and they put them in the window,'' Jean says. ``Pretty soon, schools and people all over wanted them.''

A Beverly Hills publishing house, Golden Books, heard about the idea and donated 10,000 children's books to her. A binding machine was bought, and Twin Vision was on its way.

Before long, Jean hooked up with an old newspaperman named Rockey Spicer, and they began publishing a weekly Braille newspaper called Hotline to the Deaf and Blind.

``It's distributed in 40 countries to libraries and individual subscribers who can't read a newspaper or hear the news on TV or radio,'' Jean says. ``These are people who live in a vacuum, and this gives them a chance to keep up on what's going on in the world.''

In addition, the candy store of knowledge for the blind she runs over in Tarzana has a 30,000-book lending library with more than 3,000 subscribers, including schools.

``It's all done by mail,'' she says. ``The books are checked in and checked out by computer.'' In addition to library books, there are raised illustration books and Braille calendars available.

None of this could have happened without the hard work and effort of scores of volunteers who have helped her, some for more than 20 years, Jean says Monday, opening a letter from a woman who wants to be put back on her mailing list after a 25-year absence.

She was a young, blind mother in the Valley back then, who stopped using Twin Vision books after her sighted kids got older. Now, her kids are married and have children of their own.

And the woman finds herself a grandmother who wants to sit her grandkids in her lap, and read a children's book with them.

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Photo: Jean Dyon Norris' Twin Vision library contains an array of books with Braille.

Evan Yee/Daily News