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The questions and answers below are kept as short as possible to give you a quick impression. Want to know more? E-mail to dorine@dvlop.nl.

A tactile image is an image that is put into relief. (Of course working with tactile images requires specific adaptations to be tactilely well perceivable. Often images must be simplified to avoid details, that are so small that they cannot be perceived tactilely).

Hello reader,

Are you a sighted person? Just imagine that you have no atlas and cannot look up maps anywhere else; it would be difficult to follow the news! Many blind people never had maps since they left (primary) school. Imagine you would have to understand the manual of your cell phone without the illustrations. Blind people have to. Imagine that you would have to do math without diagrams or that you never have seen the Eiffel tower, any (famous) building, the space shuttle, a huge or tiny or dangerous animal that cannot be touched or… you name it – and that you would have to imagine it based on a description…

Just ask 5 persons to draw something you have in mind; for example a dinosaur or a tree. You will have 5 very different versions. And all will be different from what you had in mind. Now try to describe and communicate what you had in mind. If you describe an object or being that is basically known to the listener or reader, and if you use concepts he knows, he might approach your image pretty well. But if he doesn’t exactly know what you are talking about, he will form a quite different image in his head.

Description may be effective, but only if the reader or listener already has a mental representation of the subject, or a set of mental images that can be used in the description. However, when using only words it is very difficult to specify:

•          The dimensions of an object and its elements

•          Their orientations

•          Their relative proportions

If a person goes blind at a later age and has built up a huge set of ‘mental’ images, description is a fine tool. A young visually impaired person must build up understanding of the world around him (or her) by experience, play, touch of real objects, animals and plants. But sometimes that is dangerous. Or insufficient. Insufficient because it may be very difficult to give an appropriate description that allows the reader or listener an adequate understanding of what is described. Then one can use scale models or tactile images.

·         Blind people live in a sighted world. So just for communications’ sake it is important to have a good mental image of the appearance of objects and beings.

·         For properly understanding scientific subjects often models and graphics are indispensable.

·         And sometimes it is just important because a blind person has a specific interest and wants to know and understand all there is to know about a subject; like a car a cars in general; or planes or churches or art. He will be very unsatisfied with just having a vague notion!

This page will concentrate on the concept behind the making of tactile images. Techniques and their different characteristics are discussed elsewhere<>. There are many techniques, but basically there are only 2 types of techniques:

1. One level of relief (swell paper, resin, Tiger)
2. More levels of relief (thermoform, high embossing)

Generally speaking one can say that the higher the relief and the more levels, the more details and nuances can be shown in a tactile image.

Yes, just like one has to learn to read or walk or anything. Training helps getting routine, or getting better, quicker and carrying on longer.

No. Tactile images never are a replacement for the visible world, like a photo or a film.  Perspective and silhouettes are very difficult to understand from tactile reading, especially for someone who has never seen at all. For example: if one just raises the lines of a three-dimensional image of a cube with the front side straight to you, it will feel like a square and two diamonds attached.

Not straight away, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. But with the proper training and by using a clear ‘method’ of drawing, even three-dimensional objects can be covered, as this article will point out.

Well, scale models are great but not a panacee. Let us go into this a little deeper.

For a long time indeed it was the common opinion that tactile images were only usable to display maps, schemes, plans and graphs. Generally scale models were preferred over tactile images as a means to explain three-dimensional objects.

On the model of the Aqueduct of Segovia, in the Museo Tiflogico of ONCE, in Madrid, as shown in the illustration, this indeed is possible. A blind person can feel how the aqueduct is running over the hill amidst the houses of the town of Segovia. The model additionally contains a 50 times magnified part of the aqueduct, allowing to study its structure in detail (which is impossible in the smaller scale model, that only shows its place amongst the houses).

However, even models are not a panacee:

·         One must go to where the model is; and most people will never touch it.

·         The number of good models is very limited; they are very expensive and hard to make.

·         Often models give only limited information; e.g. only the exterior can be explored.

·         It often is impossible to add to them or change them.

·         Exploring models by touch takes a lot of time and energy; one can only explore a limited number of models at a time.

·         It is very difficult to remember all the details and reproduce them later; often a rather general and mixed up impression remains.

A sighted visitor of a site or museum has the same problem of remembering details as a blind visitor; but the sighted person can always look them up in photo’s and drawings in books, brochures or the internet. Why should this possibility be denied to blind people?

It is important that blind people have choice; that they can make out for themselves if they want to study a tactile image of some subject.

This depends on the skills of the reader and his knowledge or experience with the subject. A person reading a scientific article will very probably understand a diagram that illustrates the text without problems. Also other types of visualization of a given text may be understood without further explanation. But often (some) (additional) explanation is required. We just said it is better to have a badly made image with a clear explanation than nothing. Also: it is no use to have a perfectly made tactile image without explanation. Ideally image and description complement each other.

No. Reading tactile images is much slower and takes much more energy than looking at a visual image. An image is only required when without it proper and complete understanding is impossible.

It would be fabulous to have a kind of standard set of images on all important themes and issues, like characteristics of building styles, diagrams, biological schemes, etcetera. If in education you want to explain the different shapes of leaves, or you want to explain a physical scheme, or the form of diagrams of mathematical formulas, it is great to have one general image or set of images of it. This can help the student make a mental image; once this is formed, description can be used to add details and information for specific situations and variations.

If you can make one, make one. If you have no embosser that embosses images, no swell machine, then use a pen and felt pad or draw on the backside in negative, use wicky sticks, textile paint or glue or anything else that dries in relief, or glue threads and different materials on a piece of paper. It is better to have a badly made image with a clear explanation than nothing. Or use other tactile means, like objects or draw virtually together, use hands and body to make proportions and dimentions clear, etcetera.

Often drawing is something that was not encouraged, so many blind people have very little or no experience with it. However: yes, they can. Some are even quite good at it. There is ‘German foil’: lines you draw are raised. There are special drawing sets for math that use this foil. There is a special pen to use on swell paper. One can use the methods described above. One can add sand or other materials to paint to make it tactile. (Etcetera).