This text examines the aspects that an illustrator or designer must consider when developing tactile books that bridge reading for visually impaired, blind and sighted readers, by using three-dimensional illustrations in physical book formats. First, it requires a basic understanding of how perception differs between visual and tactile experiences, as a haptic approach to reading is fundamentally different from reading through sight. Touch provides an immediate embodied experience of size and materiality. The text explores the affordances of three-dimensional illustrations, focusing on design principles, production techniques and challenges related to creating meaningful tactile experiences. Illustrations must follow basic design principles for the blind community. A key concept is haptic iconicity, which contrasts with raised visual illustrations. Haptic iconicity is grounded in bodily actions that are common to both blind and sighted individuals, and it communicates to the reader through materiality and clear form. To demonstrate how tactile books accommodate different reader groups, three Norwegian tactile narrative picture books were selected from the TIBI collection (the National Library’s department for accessible literature). Through reading sessions with adult readers (including one born blind and one who lost their sight as an adult), it was observed that haptic exploration guides blind readers, and that haptic iconicity relies on the hand, not the eye, for interpretation. After the reading sessions, the author had conversations with the authors of the books to understand more about the design choices. In recent time, custom-made books designed for individual users have become available. The article also discusses how this influences the illustrator-designers work.
Hilde Kramer (Tue,) studied this question.