Putting out that first issue must have been a nightmare. The magazine operated out of a temporary office on Broadway. It had no embossing equipment of its own and few staff.

Even before a magazine could be published, a difficult decision had to be made. In 1907, no single embossed reading system was used by all blind readers. While systems based on the shapes of print letters were now acknowledged to be inferior to reading systems that used raised dots, two completely different, dot-based systems were widely used: New York Point and braille.

Which system should the magazine use? Few blind people could read both. It was Matilda Ziegler's generosity that solved this problem. She simply agreed to pay for the magazine to be issued in both systems, even though this greatly added to the expense she would face.

The number of pages that would make up the first issue was so large that its manufacture had to be divided among two established printing plants: The American Printing House for the Blind was the larger, and it embossed the New York Point edition of 4,500 copies—more than 250,000 pages for the 56-page issue (including the cover). It required two weeks to emboss this quantity, and the Printing House was pleased with how quickly it completed the job! The braille run of 2,000 copies was undertaken by the Industrial Institute for the Blind in Hartford, Connecticut, an organization Holmes favored because it attempted to increase employment opportunities for blind people.