Can Visually Impaired Children Use Tactile Maps to Estimate Directions?

This article reports on three experiments in which totally blind children and children with residual vision were asked to estimate directions between landmarks in a large-scale layout of objects. The children experienced the layout either directly, by walking around it, or indirectly by examining a tactile map. The authors found that the use of tactile maps considerably facilitated the performance of the totally blind children. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.