Tactile Maps
January 31st, 2008 by Amy Standen
Human beings have used maps to describe the world for thousands of years. Blind people have used Braille for about 150. But there’s never been a way for blind people to have easy access to maps of everyday places. Until now. Amy Standen reports.
You may listen to the “Tactile Maps” radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.
Amy Standen is a Reporter for QUEST and Radio News at KQED-FM.
latitude: 37.7909, longitude: -122.434
Tags: Alex Wade, blindness, braille, disability, disabled, Engineering, Health, Jessie Lorenz, Josh Miele, KQED, kqed-fm, kqedquest, Lighthouse for the Blind, parietal cortex, pbs, Science, Smith-Kettlewell, spatial cognition, tactile maps
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Fascinating topic. I heard this on the radio this morning. I’m curious how well tactile maps could be used to educate ’seeing’ map users for topographical navigation. Feeling where the contour lines are on a map to help communicate hills and valleys would be useful as a learning tool.
Cheers!
-Brandon
Hi Brandon! Having handled the maps, I know it would take a *lot* of training for me to learn to get around on them. (For one thing — I can’t read the Braille street names.) So would I also be improving my ability to use topographical maps along the way? I don’t see why not.
I didn’t get into it much in the story, but scientists at Smith Kettlewell are interested in using MRIs to see how blind people’s brains and sighted people’s brains respond to map-reading.
It’s known that the visual cortex “lights up” when blind people read braille, the same way it lights up when a sighted person reads text. In other words, as far as the brain is concerned, you don’t necessarily need eyes to see.
So what about maps? Does the parietal cortex of a blind person “light up” when he or she reads a map with her fingers the same way it lights up when a sighted person reads a map with her eyes?
Interesting stuff.
Thanks for writing!
Amy
Very interesting story. Could you possibly post some photos of the street maps? I found some diagrams in this paper by Josh Miele and the people at Touch Graphics and this Google Tech Talk by Dr. Miele, but not too much in the way of actual photos. I guess it’s hard to to show a white sheet with tiny bumps, but maybe some well-lit macro shots?
[…] story on KQED QUEST the other day: tactile street maps for the blind. This is about TMAP, a project that essentially aims to make a street map GIS for the blind, […]
A related story:
http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2007/11/13/News/Mapping.The.Senses-3096799.shtml