Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Tactile graphics are regular line drawings with raised or elevated lines to make them recognizable through touch. They may also contain textured areas and braille text and numbers as labels. Visual elements are commonly overlaid for students who have some usable vision. Tactile graphics are particularly crucial for arts, literature, humanities, and social sciences students, where important educational content is communicated using illustrations and graphics. However, most students with visual impairment are only provided with braille and audio versions of educational content. These texts and sounds do not generate any visual information in the visually impaired students’ minds. Hence they find it difficult to forge a relationship between the textual content with the objects around them in their daily life. This research attempts to introduce tactile illustrations to students with visual impairment to test the significance of tactile illustrations in enabling their understanding of the taught content. The researcher developed tactile illustrations with an array of textures and contoured lines and presented them to randomly selected children with visual impairments. To evaluate the effect, the researcher used embedded mixed methods consisting of questionnaires and experiments to interview the three visually impaired participants studying in the third grade at an educational institution for visually impaired children. Considering the positive response of the participants as well as the test results, the researcher recommends the use of tactile illustrations in the school textbooks for VI students at the elementary level to enable and enhance their learning.