This Bible has given me an accessibility to God’s Word which simply wasn’t available to me before. It has fundamentally changed my attitude to interacting with Scripture.
These are the words of a young man called Andrew when we asked for his thoughts on the NIrV Accessible Edition. Andrew has spent years trying to find a Bible he can study and engage with, but due to his dyslexia reading God’s Word became one of the most frustrating aspects of his faith.
10% of the UK population are dyslexic, according to the British Dyslexia Association. As many who suffer with dyslexia will know, simply reading one page of a book can leave you feeling mentally exhausted. Andrew found his school years tough because he had to battle through reading on a daily basis.
When Andrew became a Christian in his early 20’s, reading the Bible was also a constant mental battle. In his own words he describes a normal layout Bible:
“…the size/design/layout are all awful for someone like me to use. I simply can’t read/write/retain quickly enough; so sometimes I have to read a sentence over and over 10 times before I can even remotely remember what I’ve read.”
It wasn’t until Andrew was at New Horizon, a large Christian festival in Northern Ireland, that he heard about the Accessible Bible. It was such an emotional experience for Andrew when he first got his hands on a copy.
Aspects like the colour of the paper, the font and the wording, enabled Andrew to be able to read the Bible without feeling tired from concentrating for the first time in his life! He managed to read the entire New Testament in just two months, and sometimes would find himself reading for up to two hours at any one time!
It was an emotional experience opening this book and realising that wow this book really is for me…FOR ME!
What a wonderful story! We thank Andrew for sharing this with us.
At Biblica we remain committed to ensuring that everyone has access to a Bible they can call their own, so that lives can be changed when reading this life– changing book!
Please pray for us as we develop this Bible into the Old Testament in the future so that people like Andrew can have the full Bible in an accessible format.
