Hartlepool teacher Pete Wells has his stories read in 21 countries after signing publishing deal

Pete Wells, who works at Catcote Futures in Hartlepool, has signed a deal with global special needs company Inclusive Technology to launch an online library of his sensory stories.

Inclusive Stories is an online collection of specialist sensory tales, which after just a few months is being used in thousands of special educational needs (SEN) schools and organisations in 21 countries.

A teacher of 25 years, Pete had always held a passion for writing and spent the bulk of his career writing stories for his own students and distributing them online free of charge.

Last year he decided to set up his own business, Pete Wells Sensory Stories.

He said: “Sensory stories have been established as a way of learning for many years, but I found a lot of them were quite childish, not very exciting, and the teenagers I was teaching at the time certainly seemed to agree with me.

"So I began writing my own. That was around 20 years ago, the internet was just coming into schools and my stories were produced and crudely animated in PowerPoint.

"But they were easy to share and could be accessed and controlled by those with severe accessibility challenges using specialist switches.

“Some of the students I work with can’t move or speak, so they require specialist switches to allow them to access and ‘tell’ a story at their own pace.”

Pete’s early work caught the eye of Inclusive Technology, a world leading provider of assistive technology, which invited him to pitch some of his story ideas to them.

The concept and stories were such a success that the company agreed a deal for Pete to publish over 70 interactive sensory stories – each professionally animated and narrated.Pete said: “It was hugely important to me that the kids could become the storytellers. It is extremely empowering for them, especially when many have such significant barriers to communication or accessing the world. It’s truly magical.

“For every story, I also write a comprehensive brief on how to make it sensory and explain how to deliver the story to kids of vastly different abilities or with different needs.”