Around AA

For most of us, the dark-blue cover of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is as familiar as our favorite coffee mug. Yet it's the content of the Big Book, not its format--its shape, size, or color--that makes it so precious to us. For years, AA World Services has been producing the Big Book and other AA literature in different formats to make them available to a wider range of recovering alcoholics. The Big Book, for example, is available in Braille, on audio cassette tape, on video in American Sign Language, in a large print edition, and on a computer diskette that runs on Windows.™ These materials let AA members with special needs have the same access to the basic literature of AA as does everyone. Now the General Service Office has listed all such materials--a total of forty-five books, pamphlets, and audiovisual materials--in a new catalog called AA Literature and Audiovisual Material for Special Needs. It offers a helpful way to locate AAWS resources that serve alcoholics with special needs: materials for the blind and visually impaired such as the audio cassette tape "A Brief Guide to AA," materials for the deaf and hard of hearing such as close-captioned videos, and easy-to-read literature like the pamphlet "Twelve Steps Illustrated."