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Can Sketches by People-With-Visual-Impairments Inform the Design of Intuitive Tactile Symbols? Findings From a Pilot Study With Students From a School for the Visually-Impaired

SessionPoster Session 2

DescriptionIn a world which is designed predominantly by and for sighted individuals, people-with-visual-impairments (PVI) often rely on sense of touch to interpret and interact with their environments. Architectural elements such as stairs, ramps, elevators, doors, and toilets are common features in daily life. However, for PVI these elements are experienced through memory, repetition, and touch. While assistive tools like tactile maps exist, many lack standardization or fail to match mental models of PVI. Therefore, the aim of this pilot study was to explore how PVI perceive and represent architectural elements experienced in daily life through tactile drawing. Thirty PVI, aged 11 to 21, participated in this study. They were asked to sketch from memory five building elements – a staircase, a ramp, an elevator, a door and a toilet – on a tactile sketchpad. Retrospective verbal protocol analysis was used to learn from participants about why and how the sketch represented a building element. Preliminary findings suggest that participants represented building features on a dominant reference plane using one or two distinct geometric attributes. Future research will focus on how sketches of building elements drawn by PVI can inform design of intuitive and meaningful tactile symbols for the built environment.

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