Most people, at some time, enjoy books which are more about the pictures than the words. Coffee table books featuring aerial photography, books about paintings, or those featuring photos of things we love such as exceptional golf courses or magnificent gardens. Pleasurable to dip into or immerse ourselves in, to share with others, to comfort, inspire, delight.
 
More particularly, multi-sensory, interactive and other resources with no or few words provide a range of enjoyable experiences (sight, touch, sound, etc), which are delightful in themselves and essential for people with no or limited ability to read text. The Books Beyond Words project supports libraries to offer these for people whose cognitive, sensory, language or mental health needs mean that conventional text-based reading may be difficult, fluctuate, or not be possible at all. This includes people with learning disabilities, autistic people, people experiencing mental ill health, people with dementia, and people who have English as an additional rather than first language. Some people may also have additional sensory or physical disabilities, such as visual or hearing impairments or reduced manual dexterity.

Helpily is developing a project with libraries in the Cotswolds to enable anyone to walk into a library and easily find gorgeous visual books which can be enjoyed without needing to read a word.