Tactile graphics: educating visually impaired children

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Title:

Tactile Graphics: a Teaching Tool for Visually Imapired Children

“They hear and touch to see the world around..
Their words contains more visuals than words..
They see only the darkness
But understands a lot more than us, who is blessed with vision!

They view the words while their actions speaks, shouts, claps and cheers..
Their silent words echo all around..
They neither speaks nor listens,
But their words are heard and ideas are spoken to each other.. Silently!”

- Ashna

Out of my limited experience with the specially-abled children from past few months. I am sharing with you, the words they wrote in my heart... They deserve respect more than sympathy because they really are specially-abled.

‘Providing the visually impaired children a better understanding about the topics they learn and helping them by resolving the issues of the existing medium of teaching.’

This project deals with the difficulties faced by the visually impaired children in the existing medium of teaching, in relation to the broader issue of ‘blindness’. The aim of the project is to come up with an effective solution by using the possibilities of tactile graphics as a teaching tool and to work as a bridge between the teachers and the students. It also aims towards removing the existing confusions created due to the absence of visual elements or effective teaching tools while educating the blind.

Tactile graphic can work over a whole range of learning activities aiding imaginative process as well as skills. There is not enough awareness about its possibilities and the issues of high cost; therefore, there is a reason to explore the potentials of tactile graphics for complex learning purposes for visually impaired children. As a sighted person has visual experience; a blind or visually impaired person has got special experience. Tactile graphics utilizes this possibility of tactile sense to provide them with a better understanding of subjects than by any other senses such as auditory, olfactory, etc.

Within the vast domain of education, it was necessary to narrow down to a specific topic. Cytology (Study of cells) is one of the problematic topics observed in the Science subject. Hence, the specific problem chosen for the project is ‘Animal Cell Structure’. This is an introductory topic in 7th standard curriculum. There is a need to provide them with a proper understanding of this new topic, so that it works as a strong base for the further complex topics. This could be attained through the proposed products by solving the difficulties in the current learning/teaching process.

The products developed are teaching tools, a Tactile Graphic Book and a 3D Tactile Model on ‘Animal Cell Structure’. The embossed diagrams provided on the tactile graphic book, replaces the absence of images along with the textual content. On the other hand, the 3D model gives the children a complete three dimensional view of the 2D shapes (cross section of the 3D forms) represented in the tactile graphic book. Hence these two products complement each other to bring a complete understanding of the topic.

The third product is designed with an aim to bring the totality of the process of learning. The learning process is complete when we are actually able to recollect and reflect/reproduce what we learned. So through the above mentioned teaching tools, they could learn the topic i.e. the structure of animal cell. But during an examination, they don’t get an opportunity to recreate what they have learned as they can’t make diagrams like a sighted child could do. So to compensate this, a medium was needed to let them recreate the mental imagery they gained by observing/studying the tactile diagrams. So, to avoid this scenario, a Tactile Puzzle Board is designed. It is an examination tool; an empty space where they can arrange the elements of diagram by themselves; recollecting the mental imagery they has got by learning with the other tools and to recreate it on this given space.

The developed products works as a solution for a particular problem, but has got immense possibilities for solving similar or more complex issues in the academics of visually impaired children. Hence the project contributes to a particular community intending its empowerment but is universal in nature and can be applied globally.