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1-2 December 2005
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Sighted children see images everywhere they look, from the day they are born. What they don’t see in real life (volcanoes, witches, dinosaurs, talking bears, rocket launches, Michael Jackson) they see on television or in the pages of books and magazines. Story books for the youngest sighted children have more pictures than text and non-fiction books for all ages are packed with illustrations.
For young children with little or no sight the situation is very different. Not only do they miss out on the day to day visual experiences of sighted children, but children’s books with tactile illustrations are few and far between. Most are made by hard-pressed parents, teachers and classroom assistants desperate to produce something their children can learn from and enjoy.
Recent figures from Dr Jugnoo Rahi at the Institute of Child Health show that childhood blindness is more common in the UK than previously thought. By the age of sixteen, six per 10,000 children in the UK will have extreme sight problems or blindness. Of these, over 70% will have another significant disability.
Even children without additional disabilities are likely to suffer from some developmental delay in their early years.
There is therefore a great need for appropriate tactile books not only for the youngest visually-impaired children but also for older children - and even for adults.
All children need pictures - to entertain, to motivate, to help towards literacy, to teach concepts and to inform about the world. And children with no sight need them even more.
Over the past five years the ClearVision library has developed a collection of over 800 beautiful hand-made tactile books for young children with little or no sight. These books are available for loan by post anywhere in the UK. The books have added text in braille or Moon (a simpler alternative to braille) but are also suitable for children with visual impairment and additional disabilities, including those who are not likely to become readers.
The tactile book collection is a new addition to ClearVision’s library of over 13,000 mainstream children’s books with the text added in braille on clear plastic sheets. These mainstream books can all be shared by print and braille readers, whether these are children learning to read braille with the help of sighted family and classmates, or blind parents reading to sighted children. ClearVision’s mainstream books are borrowed by over 800 families, schools, libraries and vi services all over the UK. For more information see www.clearvisionproject.org.
The new tactile books are in a variety of formats. Over half the collection are fabric books with objects and textures sewn to the pages. These books have been made for ClearVision by volunteers all over the country, including Women’s Institute and Embroiderers’ Guild members, church groups, college students and women in three prisons. Fabric books are quite robust and do not tear or come apart easily; objects can be very securely sewn to the page so that inquisitive children will find it hard to peel them off.
Some are board books with collage illustrations, whilst others have thermoforms of real objects to illustrate simple stories. A few books have screen-printed raised line illustrations. Most of the books were produced in the UK but we have some from Germany, Norway, Finland, France, Czech Republic and Belgium.
All the books contain tactile illustrations but some also have sounds (bells, sound buttons, etc) or smells (lavender, spices, etc.). Topics include nursery rhymes and traditional tales, original stories, numbers, individual letters of the alphabet, early learning, and everyday life. Most of the books were especially created as tactile books for children with visual impairment; a few are published mainstream books with added tactile illustrations.
The books are enjoyed by children with low vision as well as totally blind children. Strong colour contrasts, large print text and the use of light reflective materials make tactile books especially enjoyable for children with some sight.
This new collection has been warmly welcomed and feedback has been very positive. One teacher told of how, as she read the book aloud to a young girl with severe sight loss, she noticed the child’s fingers creeping beneath the open page to find the next tactile illustration. Others have commented favourably on the reactions of sighted peers in a mainstream class. We now lend to over eighty schools, nurseries and education services in the UK.
ClearVision’s experience of setting up a tactile book lending library is covered in detail in the Force Foundation publication Setting up a Lending Library of Tactile Books for Young Children with Little or No Sight. www.f-force.nl
The collection also includes some copies of Tactus prize-winning books from previous years.
The Tactus organisation (now known as Typhlo and Tactus) aims to encourage excellence and the sharing of ideas, resources and expertise in the creation of tactile books for visually-impaired children. It is also a way of providing much-needed, high quality tactile books for distribution around the EU.
A competition is held once a year for participating countries - this year’s competition will be judged in Dijon in December 2005. All competition entries are examined and discussed by sighted and visually-impaired experts from all over Europe. In this way ideas and inspiration are shared amongst participating countries. The winners will receive 600 euros and a trophy and will also see several hundred copies of their books produced and distributed (at an affordable price made possible by an EU subsidy) in English, French, Finnish, German, Dutch, Italian and Polish editions. All entries are photographed and many of these photos appear on the Tactus publicity poster each year - to inspire and inform tactile book producers all over Europe (and beyond).
Typhlo and Tactus) has now received EU funding for another three years. Our activities will now focus more on cultural exchanges and this is reflected in a new category for competition entries. For more information see the ClearVision website or www.tactus.org.
ClearVision is also involved in the Tactile Book Advancement Group (TBAG). Together we are working to promote the design, provision and enjoyments of tactile books for blind and partially-sighted children. Anyone who has anything to contribute to these aims is welcome to attend these meetings or to receive Minutes. See: www.nctd.org.uk/tbag
The group is currently working on a website, which will be hosted by NCTD as part of the RNIB website. This will include guidelines for producing tactile illustrations in various media, plus suggestions for producing specific books. We are keen to encourage anyone to contribute their own ideas for specific tactile illustrations and will be producing a form to enable them to do so easily. The website will also include guidelines for mainstream publishers as well as guidance for graphic design students and anyone else who is new to the idea of tactile book design.
TBAG is also working on the production of a kit to encourage people to start making tactile books.
TBAG sees a great need for more tactile illustrations for children who have progressed beyond the simplest tactile books, to enable a smooth transition from story sacks to maps and diagrams.
TBAG is fortunate to have Dr Frances Aldrich, formerly of the University of Sussex, as one of its members. Frances has participated in workshops with NCTD and ClearVision to introduce parents, teachers and classroom assistants to the concept of ‘graphical literacy’. These workshops have covered both production and usage of tactile pictures and have considered the difference between conceptual and tactile difficulty. A picture of a pineapple may be hard to decipher by touch, with many prickly details; once identified the concept is an easy one for anyone who has ever encountered a pineapple. In contrast a very simple graph may be easy to identify by touch (‘it’s a line going up and then down’) but the idea that this line represents travellers on the underground at different times of day may be hard to grasp conceptually.
There is much work to be done on understanding how best to help a child to become graphically literate and there is a desperate shortage of appropriate tactile resources - especially for older children. But progress is being made and the challenge is an exciting one.