A Canadian photographer says the blind lack access to our "much sexualised" world, so she has decided to create a new kind of pornography, with tactile images, the first designed especially for the blind.

"When I had the idea, I started looking around and I realised there were no nude books out there for the blind," the Canadian artist, Lisa Murphy, said.

"We live in a society that is much sexualised - just look at advertising.

"But if you can't see then you are probably not aware of how sexualised it is.

"And I believe that vision-impaired people have been [wrongly] left out of the experience.

"Or course, anyone can find it erotic, not just the vision-impaired."

The book, entitled Tactile Mind, features pages made of thermoform plastic - the same material used for Braille.

Each page contains raised images of naked men and women in various poses, some wearing masks or in suggestive bondage, along with titillating phrases in Braille.

Murphy photographed friends in costumes and masks, in part to convince them to participate.

"It's so much easier to get someone to take off their clothes in front of a camera if they're non-identifiable," she said.

She is herself also featured in the book.

"I couldn't expect anyone to do it if I wasn't a part of it too."

She then transformed the pictures into fine sculptures - a process that took more than 50 hours per image.

Murphy, a former volunteer at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, said she picked up the necessary skills for the unique book by transforming images of animals for children's educational books.

Several visually-impaired people who reviewed the book for various Canadian and US media suggested it was interesting, but not titillating.

"Some people find it erotic, some think it's high fetish, and some have called it pornographic, but for me pornographic is intercourse. So for me, it was a 'nudie book'," Murphy said.

- AFP