Riitta Kangasaho and Tuija Piili-Jokinen, Consulting teachers at the Valteri Center for Learning and Consulting, Onerva

Optimizing tactile images and maps for learning materials

In this session you will learn how you can limit the production of tactile images and create sets of images which can be used with books of the same subject. This will facilitate the selection process of tactile images when teachers are picking images for their specific subject and it will also save costs of production and deliveries.

Celia has developed and produced tactile materials for visually impaired for decades. An important target group is children who use tactile images and maps as part of school books written in braille or in electronic format. The teachers and staff ordering materials from Celia have reported that selecting relevant tactile images has been challenging. The amount of images within each book is huge and there is not enough time to make use of all the delivered images.

Celia and Valteri Center for Learning, Onerva therefor started a project to renew the production of subject-specific tactile images and maps used in learning materials. The basic idea of the project was to limit the production of tactile images only to the relevant ones and to create sets of images which can be used with the books of the same subject e.g. biology, geography or history from all Finnish publishers and which conform the national curriculum in Finland. These sets include also pedagogical tips to activate not only the visually impaired pupil but the whole class. The image sets were also supplemented with the printed explanations of each image and table contents serving pupils’ teachers and assistants.  The feedback of this renewal from schools has been positive. 

Handout file (pdf, opens in new window)