Source: Perkins Webcasts: "Teaching Tactile Graphics – Lucia Hasty"
Educator Lucia Hasty describes best practices for including tactile graphics within textbooks and classroom activities, in these videos produced by Perkins School for the Blind. She explains the differences between visual and tactile learning styles, and notes that tactile learning is not simply re-presenting printed information in a raised format. In making tactile material for use in the classroom, teachers must be mindful of which information is key to the lesson, and to present it for greatest success.
Spacial Relationship and Graphic Literacy (Video)
Moving from Models to Graphics (Video)
Strategies for Reading Tactile Graphics (Video)
Long before children who are blind or visually impaired are exposed to tactile information presented in academic textbooks, they must understand positions in space, and relative locations, such as “the book is behind the blocks.” Learning spatial concepts and prepositional vocabulary in the preschool years sets a foundation for locating information within a tactile graphic or model.
As students learn to interpret tactile information, they will come to understand that information is presented in different ways for different purposes; for example, a circle may represent a circle, or it may represent a sphere, a cross-section, or an aerial view. The student must be taught to use the context of the written material and the graphic’s key along with the shapes to understand the graphic’s meaning and purpose.
Most textbooks across the public school curriculum make significant use of graphical information to enhance or reinforce textual information. Braille readers must be taught how to read and interpret the same information presented tactilely. Makers of academic material must also learn the best practices for representing graphical information tactilely.
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