UNIT CONTENT
BLINDNESS AND WAYFINDING
In this curriculum, when I use “blind” to refer to a broad range of vision impairments, I am continuing in a tradition started by the National Federation of the Blind not to dilute the political power of a group of people with varying amounts of usable vision but common goals. Legal blindness focuses on the inability to read print and the inability to travel unassisted. 7 These limitations can be addressed in multiple ways in the life of a blind person of any age, including Orientation and Mobility training.
Orientation and Mobility
Orientation and Mobility is the “art and science of teaching a person with vision loss to travel efficiently, safely and independently”. This can include cane skills, using a sighted guide, pre-planning a route, or using the number of audio GPS phone apps. 8 These methods work well. In fact, if given a tactile map, blind individuals perform equally well as sighted people in tests meant to show mental mapping abilities. 9 When asked to way find in unfamiliar environments, research shows that “congenitally blind individuals construct their mental image of the city by using their three senses of touching, hearing, and smelling, as well as their safety and experience.” 10
Relationship to Space
In the above-mentioned study on mental mapping, blind people in Jordan were asked to define common architectural terms, and then this was compared to the dictionary terms. Their responses showed an emotional and functional relationship to mapping space, rather than the seeming impartiality presented by an atlas. For example, respondents said that landmarks form “an emotional bond with people” or included in the definition of bridges that they are “scary, deafening and loud” or compared an intersection to a traffic circle as a “better opportunity to cross the street.” This is compared to the technical definition of the street, which is cited as “A road in a town or city that has buildings along one or both sides and is serviced with lighting, a system of drains, road marking, etc.” 11
Before reading the study, I assumed that since I am not blind, I must rely mostly on my vision to navigate and thus would learn about an equally competent, but very different way of navigating. After reading the study, I realized I had similar internal definitions of these places based on my use of them rather than the simple existence of them. When guiding me to the theater, GPS map apps will work off the city grid of streets, while I work off where the noise from the crowd is coming from. Rather than taking the fastest way to the airport, I take the way that avoids an overpass I find dangerous and terrifying. When traveling down a street in Richmond named ‘Monument’ Avenue, even though said Confederate monuments have been taken down, the history lingers in the name on the signs and on the maps. All of us have relationships to space that involve senses other than vision.
The Work of Carmen Papalia
Wayfinding methods that rely on senses other than the visual is explored beautifully in Carmen Papalia’s Mobility Device. This project features the artist, who is blind, surrounded by a marching band, who guides him through public spaces using various improvised sounds to warn of hazards or direct his motion. 12 Navigation through sound returns in his work White Cane Amplified. At the beginning of his performance, he attempts to amplify the sound of his cane using the megaphone. Abandoning the logistically futile activity, he spends the rest of the performance communicating through the megaphone, verbally alerting passerby that he is blind, asking for help, apologizing in advance for bumping into them. 13
By drawing attention to navigating while Blind, Carmen Papalia specifically explores the aural as well as the cultural. The band serves as an aide for Papalia to navigate via sound: which is done by those who are hearing and sighted as well. Those who are not Deaf associate louder varied noises with a more crowded area, use direction and volume to judge distance, and will automatically turn towards loud noises.
But also, it forces everyone on the street to pay attention as Papalia moves through the space. They are forced to acknowledge they share space and community with blind individuals. Georgina Kleege challenges the concept that disabled people should stay home due to barriers in access, in her discussion of art museums saying “when blind people show up at an art museum, we assert that we have a place in this society and a right to public institutions” 14
SPACE IN ART: TACTILITY
In calling attention to the way blind people move through space; focused on the senses, impaired by a poorly designed world, with great humor; Carmen Papalia shows space through the literal map made by his routes, but also through the way he turns those routes into an art space. The concept of space in art “refers to the distances or areas around, between, and within components of a piece.” 15 In the art room, we typically talk about that as purely visual space: after all, in the course catalogue, my class is referred to as visual art. But one only needs to look at the rich reflections of participants in tactile tours in museums to see how much of space in art can be understood just via touch.
Tactile Tours
In the discussion on tactility, it is important to understand that blind people do not have a heightened perception of touch compared to sighted people. 16 Instead, when we discuss a tactile relationship to art, we understand blind people have insights to share with sighted people in many ways but certainly in their tactile access to artwork in museums.
The ability to touch artwork directly is limited to the comparatively smaller population of blind people to protect fragile artworks from deterioration from overhandling. 17 Touch tours can also include scale models, plaster casts of the artwork, 18 or in the case of a limited and extremely expensive exhibit put on by the Prado, tactile reproductions of paintings using raised lines. 19
Touch tours vary in existence, extent, and practice by museum. 20 The experiences of Blind individuals who have access to these tours expands our understanding of artwork as touch can often lead to “something that is probably not apparent to the eyes alone.” 21 It is only if you are in the center of Stonehenge, you notice the temperature change, only if you put your ear up to the stone you hear the bird nests in the fissures in the stone, noisy and alive, rending the whole artwork buzzing like a pulse. 22 When I see a photo of Stonehenge, I am taking it in as a single artwork. But individuals who get to stand in the center now are situated in the very space of the artwork and can interpret it more strongly through their body’s relationship to the artwork in space.
When I began to read through accounts written by those who have participated in tactile tours, of artworks that I have loved and taught for ages, but have often never gotten to see myself, and if I have seen them I certainly haven’t touched them, it was electric. I got completely new perspectives that reframed my teaching and brought my relationship to the artwork closer to the original artists who would have certainly had a tactile relationship during the creation of the artwork. These tours are not just a charitable act to include the Blind in the art world, but vital to our understanding of art. Many designed spheres think about the inclusions of disabilities as an afterthought rather than something that is vital to their thriving, which is why we will next look at a philosophy of design that counters this idea.
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
A rich relationship to space and art is not predicated on vision. Navigating is possible without vision. But barriers still exist. For example, the bus route I take announces the stops orally, an example of Universal Design, but often too late to pull the rope to request a stop, which means it needs more work to be fully accessible. Even if you request a stop in time, most of the bus stops are unpaved and unmowed, and require walking in the shoulder of the road to get to your destination thanks to lack of sidewalks. This leads to some level of barriers to everyone regardless of mobility issues, but it does not have to be that way.
If you are wearing clothes, if you are in a building, if you are reading this on a computer, you are surrounded by the choices of a designer. Designers are artists: they must make their spaces and objects appealing in looks and straightforward in use. Seeking to include as many people as possible in your design is the underpinnings of Universal Design.
Tactile Wayfinding
Examples of Universal Design were rolled out in public spaces thanks to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, for example the labeling of many signs in public places in Braille. 23 The presence of Braille does not inhibit sighted people from reading the print letters, but allows Braille readers to access printed information, thus, this design includes more people and allows more access than just printed information would. Another similar example is highlighted by blind activist Molly Burke in her 2025 social media video If you were blind, how would you find the toilet? In the video, she shows a sign in the Guide Dog center in Australia that has a Braille key and tactile map of the layout of the bathroom outside the door. She then talks about how hard it is to negotiate public restrooms as a blind woman with a guide dog. Public restrooms are all laid out differently, leaving every experience full of anxiety as she tries to figure out where the line may be, the accessible stall, the location and placement of the toilet, soap, sinks and hand dryer. All this is solved by a tactile layout map, which like Braille signs do not inhibit printed letter signs and so does not inhibit sighted people’s use of the bathroom. 24
Practical Considerations and Financial Complications
The roll out of these beneficial features is complicated. Braille signage is inadequate if people do not consider how blind people may use a space. To summarize an example Georgina Kleege gives in her book More Than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art, imagine you are blind (if you are not already) and are in an elevator. You find the button for your floor, whether using Braille or raised type, and press it. As you travel, however, the doors open and close as passengers get on with you and off. How can you tell which floor is yours? You would likely resort to asking for assistance from others on the elevator – the same as Blind people did before the roll out of Braille buttons. 25
If you do not remain satisfied that Braille is sufficient, if you start thinking through the map of the entire journey from point A to point B as a Blind person, more successful Universal Design begins to emerge – could each floor be announced verbally as well? Could there be a vibrating feature announcing floors for the Deafblind, but then what about if the elevator was crowded? Suggestions in Universal Design for navigating cities include thinking about the sense of smell in wayfinding 26, which would be unrealistic for an enclosed space like an elevator. Successful Universal Design asks we think through the entire environment for a variety of people. Additionally, how would contradictions be resolved? In past lessons I have had students point out they find captions distracting for their ADHD, so how is that balanced with the needs of hearing-impaired students and language learning students that need them? There are many simple places to start, but few perfect answers. This is the perfect complexity to explore in the art room.
Another issue with the rollout of tactile maps is the expense of professional, standardized, tactile maps. Touch Graphics Inc touts their tabletop maps as “combining raised line graphics with high contrast, back lit visuals, and adding touch-activated spoken place names and other descriptive information” to achieve universal accessibility to visitors, at a height available to adults and children standing or seated. The price tag as of 2025 stands at $4,000. 27 A kiosk version with touch-activated audio is $6,500. 28
Tactile Maps in the Classroom
These are designed for institutions like a museum or the visitors’ center of a park, but tactile mapping skills are vital for students as well. A tactile talking atlas is available from the same Touch Graphics Inc website. A student selects one of the tactile atlas pages with Braille labels ($250) 29 to a tablet ($750) where they are then able to tap different parts of the map and have the features read out loud to them. 30 Often cheaper options are used by teachers to get the same effect to their vision impaired students. A professional in the field with whom I was lucky enough to discuss this topic, discussed several assistive technologies she uses for the subject such as the Picture Maker Wheatley Tactile Diagramming Kit from American Printing House which allows you to move shapes endlessly on a felt board ($200) 31 or Tactile Town, which looks like a large set of miniature plastic game pieces that allows you to make and remake a city scene to teach students orienting and mind maps. As useful as that is, Tactile Town currently retails at over $500.32 She admitted to using Cricut or foam stickers just as much. 33
Additional low-technology tactile map methods advice given to teachers of the blind include gluing string, seeds, beads, and using aluminum foil. 34 These sorts of low-cost options are also well suited to the general education teacher teaching about tactile maps without the resources of the special education program.
In discussing Universal Design in the art classroom with majority sighted students, especially specifically tactile maps, the question may arise: how could a blind person understand something they couldn’t see? The Handbook for Itinerant and Resource Teachers of Blind and Visually Impaired Students gives a perfect response:
Sighted people tend to become too absorbed in the question of “How can she really understand?” Actually, all of us must deal with concepts we cannot fully understand - infinity, for example - and work with them as necessary. Only astronauts and a few others have personally experienced weightlessness; yet all of us can grasp the concept and discuss it intelligently. 35
WHY MAPS?
Why work with the theme of maps to accomplish these goals? What do maps represent artistically in a world where many of us get our satellite GPS maps on our phones?
Maps represent our relationship to a place. Take for example a three-dimensional map of a national park in Guatemala made in 2018 by migrant children in a Texas detention center. Clay, paper, popsicle sticks, and paint recreate the papas fritas stand, wildlife, visitors, and a large Guatemalan flag. Working from memory and unconcerned with scale, this is no navigation guide to the park 36 but rather an artwork testament to what the site means. To construct it out of three-dimension materials, to make it a tactile artwork rather than a simple drawing, to make it an artwork you can touch and feel the different textures, shows an immense level of care.
While this artwork was not made for blind audiences, it shows why maps matter. Uprooted from their home, having undergone a traumatic migration experience, and now held in detention in an unfamiliar country, this artwork reads as a monument. It seeks to represent a familiar place from home, to rebuild that place in a small way in a terrifying new place, to orient yourself in relation to home.
Maps show us where we are and are embedded with how we feel about that place. Everyone, regardless of ability or background can relate to that, and has something to say about it.
Comments: