For sighted people, pictorial literacy comes naturally; everything they see gets added to an image bank in the brain, images that are tapped not only when they see similar things, but also when reading and conversing with others. These images include things as common as a traffic light or a star, to images of the Egyptian pyramids or Mona Lisa's smile.
Consider how much more difficult it is for blind people to learn biology, without having a diagram of a heart. Years of cognitive psychology research have proven that blind people can, indeed, form mental images of objects they experienced through touch, and, therefore, develop image banks of their own to give them access to the part of human culture and intellectual life that has been long considered accessible only through sight.
Art Beyond Sight (ABS) has been trailblazing a way to pictorial literacy by creating a complete tactile encyclopedia of images of famous art works and architectural monuments, Art History Through Touch and Sound. To date, six volumes of this multisensory art encyclopedia have been published and another five are being developed. Each volume contains 6 to 9 tapes with text, a manual with tactile diagrams and color reproductions, a printout of the text and teacher supplement, and an accessible disc version of the text. ABS is working to create Art History Through Touch and Sound Online and make more than 600 tactile images of well-known works of art and architecture available on the Web free of charge.
