Note: read the full paper of this presentation.
As a sighted child I loved pictures, puzzles, maps - and everything visual. Losing my sight completely and quite suddenly at the age of seven, over forty years ago, was obviously traumatic. Almost unbearable was the fact that my beloved books were suddenly just pages of densely packed dots, with no bright, busy pictures to draw in the young reader… and how I missed drawing!
Those were the days when few people seemed to realise that blind and partially sighted children deserved and needed something stimulating to feel which would replace all the visual treasures they were missing.
Home-made pictures using all sorts of textures and symbols, vacuum-formed maps, thermoformed diagrams made from collage masters, and swell paper representations have all filled in some of those gaps for me over the years.
Today, changed attitudes and new technology are making the whole area of tactile graphics enormously exciting. We live in a visual world, and those of us who are blind need to embrace as many visual concepts as we can. Finding interesting ways to develop a young child's sense of touch is a vital key to successful braille or Moon reading. My job involves improving literacy resources so that learning to read by touch is more enjoyable. What better way to improve literacy than using and fostering a love of tactile graphics from the very start and then providing opportunities for tactile images throughout adult life?
Prior knowledge of topic assumed: Low
Contains advanced technical content: No
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