Crime writer Ian Rankin launched an appeal yesterday to help rehouse the UK�s leading Braille printing press and protect it for the future.

Crime writer Ian Rankin launched an appeal yesterday to help rehouse the UK's leading Braille printing press and protect it for the future.

The Edinburgh-based Scottish Braille Press needs to be relocated to a more suitable building and fitted with new equipment.

The press, owned by the Royal Blind charity, is the largest of its kind in Britain and produces books, magazines, newspapers and signs for blind and visually impaired people.

Rankin, whose son attends the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh, has thrown his weight behind the £2m fundraising campaign.

He said: "It's not just about Edinburgh and it's not even just about Scotland. The Braille Press creates stuff for the whole of the UK, so it's a hugely valuable resource.

"They need new premises and they need new equipment, so that in the 21st century Braille can continue to be as important to blind people as it is just now."

Urging people to contribute to the appeal, he said: "It's an extraordinarily useful thing and it gives employment to a lot of disabled and visually impaired people.

To mark the campaign launch, the Scottish Braille Press is printing a Braille version of Ian Rankin's story Death Is Not The End. A passage from his Rebus novel Fleshmarket Close, in Braille, was also pinned to the walls of the real street of that name in Edinburgh yesterday.