Pictures and the Blind

Pictures and the Blind

Future Reflections Winter/Spring 1990, Vol. 9 No. 1
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PICTURES AND THE BLIND
[PICTURE] This picture of a horse was drawn
by a blind woman who grew up
as a blind child.
From the Editor: Last spring
the National Federation of
the Blind hosted a most intriguing
and unusual symposium.
On June 9, 1989,
President Marc Maurer welcomed
participants and distinguished
speakers to "Pictures
and the Blind: A
Symposium for Educators
and Parents.'! must confess
that when I first heard of our
plans to sponsor this symposium
my immediate reaction
was, "That's interesting,
but how important are art
and pictures to the blind in the overall scheme of
things?" Furthermore, the key speakers were researchers,
and I have a healthy disrespect for
most of the research done in the blindness field.
But people I did respect were organizing the
symposium, so I knew there had to be merit in it.
My faith was justified. As the symposium
proceeded I grew more and more excited as I saw
how the research done by speakers John M. Kennedy
(Psychology Department, University of
Toronto, Scarborough Campus, Canada), Paul
Gabias (Department of Psychology, St. Thomas
University, Canada), and Morton A. Heller
(Psychology Department, Winston-Salem State
University, North Carolina), challenged popular
misconceptions about blindness and the sense of
touch. It was refreshing to see research results
which were consistent with the real-life experiences
of blind people.
In addition to the new insights I gained from the
discussion about tactile pictures for the blind, I
learned about practical applications for this research.
Each of the three speakers mentioned
above distributed lesson
plans which could be used
by anyone -- teachers of the
blind, art teachers, classroom
teachers, etc.--to
teach drawing and drawing
concepts to blind children.
(These lesson plans are
being made available by the
NFB Parents Division. See
note at the end of this article.)
The
symposium ended with
presentations from Karen Spitzberg, art history
instructor with Art Education for the Blind of
New York; and Elizabeth Salzhauer, Whitney
Museum of American Art Education, and Director
of Art Education for the Blind. They have
experimented with methods of making largely
visual paintings accessible to the blind through
sound and tactile interpretations. They described
their programs and shared several examples of
their experimentations with the audience.
As is so often the case at Federation conferences,
the learning that took place was a two-way street.
The audience was not shy about speaking up, and
the speakers learned much about what is practical
and valuable (and what is not) in their work
from the perspective of the blind, teachers of the
blind, and parents of blind children.
The following article is in three sections. Each
segment is based upon the presentations given at
the symposium by John M. Kennedy, Paul
Gabias, and Morton A. Heller.
MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT TOUCH
AND TACTILE PICTURES
FOR THE BLIND
by Dr. J. M. Kennedy
Editor's Note: The following information is
based upon Dr. Kennedy's presentation at the symposium
as well as an interview with this editor
subsequent to the symposium. The title is the
editor's, however. Dr. Kennedy's research on the
topic of tactile pictures for the blind began sometime
in the '70s. He has published articles about his
reasearch in such journals as the American Scientist and the International Journal of Rehabilitation
Research. Dr. Kennedy is with the psychology
department of the University of Toronto, Scarborough
Campus.
Myth: Touch is a sense of immediate contact, and
therefore, one will have trouble getting the impression
of a large form using the sense of touch.
Fact: It takes time to explore shapes with vision.
It takes time to explore shapes with touch. If you
take the time you can discover, equally well with
either touch or vision, the shape of a table, the
location of the table in the room, the room's
location on a corridor, how the corridor fits into
the building, how the building is sited on the
street, and how the street has hills and grades.
Myth: Touch cannot be used to get information
about three-dimensional objects from a two
dimensional representation.
Fact: The sense of touch is quite adequate for the
task of discerning, from a two-dimensional tactile
picture, the shapes of large objects, what is in
front, what is in back, what part of an object
overlaps another, and what direction things lie in.
We use indicators of these concepts in pictures
for the sighted, and we can use many of those
same indicators in pictures for the blind. Blind
people will often, as they draw their own tactile
pictures, make up indicators to express these
three-dimensional features.
Myth: If you change the scale of an object, it trips
up the sense of touch.
Fact: Change of scale can be dealt with by touch
just as it is with vision. The basic shape we are
trying to understand stays the same no matter
what the scale. A big dog and a little dog are the
same as far as shape and touch are concerned.
(Note: The size cannot be reduced for touch as
much as it can be reduced for vision and still be
recognizable. However, as long as this lower limit
of size is not exceeded, a change of scale is no
problem for recognition of shapes by touch.)
Myth: Lines and line drawings cannot stand for
corners and edges with touch the way they can
with vision when the sighted look at outline drawings.
Fact: Both blind people and sighted people have
the same intuitive, untaught sense that a line is a
perfectly good substitute for the edges and
corners of three-dimensional objects. Blind
children make tactile line drawings this way
without being taught and so do blind adults when they are asked to make tactile drawings for the
first time in their lives. (In our research we used
a convenient raised-line drawing kit available
from a Swedish organization for the blind. It
makes a raised-line drawing when you write on it
with a ball point pen.)
For our research we tested blind children and
adults in Maryland, New York, Massachusetts,
and Arizona in the United States; Ontario and
Alberta in Canada; and Haiti in the Caribbean.
In every place we asked blind people to make
raised-line drawings, we found that not only
could they do so but that their drawings had the
same form as drawings made by sighted children.
We asked blind people to draw familiar objects
such as tables, chairs, and glasses. Many of them
were so enthused that they independently volunteered
drawings of dogs, people, birds, etc. These
drawings are often recognizable to sighted
people and to other blind people.
In conclusion, we found that blind people learn
to use drawing materials quickly, and often with
a few minutes practice they made better and
more sophisticated drawings than they did on
their first attempt. They were able to make
reasonable drawings at first go, and they improved
quite rapidly under their own initiative
without having to be taught anything by us.
PERSPECTIVE AND METAPHOR
IN RAISED-LINE DRAWINGS:
WHAT CAN BE EXPECTED
FROM BLIND CHILDREN?
by Dr. Paul Gabias
Editor's Note: This paper was prepared by Dr.
Paul Gabias for the symposium. Dr. Gabias assisted
Dr. Kennedy for a time with his work on
tactile pictures for the blind and is currently doing
his own research along those lines while also teaching,
among other classes, Visual Perception at the
University of St. Thomas in Canada. Dr. Gabias
explained how he came to teach that subject and
how he almost "blew it" because of his own false
assumptions about blindness. (Dr. Gabias has
been blind from birth.) As an undergraduate he
had asked to be excused from taking the exam on
the segment about visual perception. After all, what
could a blind person understand about visual perception?
A little later he discovered that a blind
professor was teaching an upper-division course
on -- that's right -- Visual Perception. This changed
his whole notion of what he was capable of doing
as a blind person. He took the course from the blind
professor and now teaches it, too.
--Basic Questions
In drawings, when emphasis on certain
aspects of an object is required, the object must
be drawn from a point of view. Because a drawing
is flat it is not possible for it to represent all of the
aspects of an object. For example, in a side view
of a table we can show how high the table is. We
can also show the length or width of the table, but
not both simultaneously (see figure 1). If a side
view is not required the width and length of the
table can be shown simultaneously, but not the
height of the table. The table will appear flat, and
the height can only be inferred by the length of
the lines corresponding to the legs (see figure 2).
The questions to be addressed in the lessons
to follow are:
1. Can blind people draw from a point of
view?
2. What kinds of points of view are understood
and taken by blind people in drawings? With
respect to this question we will discuss three
subquestions:
(a) How can the same drawing of a given object depict that object from different points of
view?
(b) How can a given object be drawn from different points of view?
(c) How can we show, in a given drawing, what
is near and what is far? Would convergent
perspective be understood by blind people?
3. Are blind children likely to understand different
kinds of points of view at different ages?
4. How do blind people depict events in a static picture?
5. When are blind children likely to be able to
depict events in a picture?
--Background Information for the Educator
It has been thought by some that it would be
difficult for blind children to understand the concept
of a point of view. For these people, the idea
that blind children could spontaneously express
a point of view in drawings would be difficult to
imagine. To some, it would seem a waste of time
to try to improve the natural abilities of blind
children with respect to drawings, because, after
all, they wouldn't have any natural ability.
Many people imagine, including some
psychologists, that the world of the blind is
piecemeal, fragmented, and unconnected. To
them the world of the blind is based on piecemeal
touches from here and there. These touch sensations
have to be constructed into some sort of
framework which may, to some degree, conform
with reality, but not a visual reality. For these
people vision is thought to give the true picture,
the only picture of the world. For the sighted
person who sees the world, the world is connected
and whole. For the blind person who
must feel and hear the world, the world is fragmented
and unconnected. How could blind
people have a point of view, they might ask, when
having a point of view requires knowledge of
whole objects from different vantage points?
The retort is that, regardless of all our theorizing,
the world is what it is, with all its constancies
and all its variability. We all must live in it, and
we use our perceptual systems to receive information
about our actions. We also use our perceptual
systems to find out what is happening
around us.
As we walk around, we perceive the world as
whole and connected. We know that things do
not go out of existence just because they are out
of sight or out of reach or out of earshot. From
early on blind and sighted infants experiment
with this principle. Sighted infants watch their
hands go in and out of sight, as they move their
hands in and out of the field of view. Both blind
and sighted infants hear sounds of mother approaching
and receding. Sometimes she makes
noise and sometimes she doesn't. Yet she always
exists. Parts of mother and father are explored
with the eyes or the hands. Then other parts are
explored. The child can go back to the earlier
parts and find that they still exist.
By extension, parts of the crib and toys and
blankets can be explored. These objects can be
perceived as whole entities, even though certain
parts can only be perceived at one time. After
exploration even rooms and the house can be
perceived as whole, even though a small number
of the parts are explored at one time.
In short, the world is perceived as a whole
made up of parts rather than a set of parts making
up a whole. Extensive knowledge of the parts
comes after knowing the whole rather than the
knowledge of the whole coming after knowledge
of the parts. We're interested in the overall shape
of an object before we want to know how it is put
together.
How do these principles apply to drawing? If
blind children and adults can draw objects from
a point of view, then it must be assumed that the
blind can perceive objects as whole entities with
connected parts. They can, at will, focus on the
parts or focus on the whole. What is the evidence
for this?
There is reliable evidence, both from the
University of Toronto and New York University,
which shows that blind children and adults can
understand and produce drawings from a vantage
point. In other words, depictions by blind people
are not restricted to representations of entire
objects. Certain parts or aspects of objects can be
shown while other parts are deliberately
eliminated for clarity.
As suggested earlier, for example, a side view
of a table can be shown instead of the entire table.
Here, only two legs are shown, not four. Also,
only one side of the table is shown, not four. The
advantage of the side view over the whole view is
that the height of the table can be shown as well
as its thickness. So, in the side view, while some
aspects are lost, other aspects are gained.
Blind people have applied this principle to all
kinds of drawings, including those of animals,
cubes, vehicles, and people. For example, figure
3 (Kennedy, 1980) shows a drawing of a dog from
the side. It was drawn by a Phoenix child who
became totally blind before two years old. Figure
4 (Kennedy, 1980) shows three tables drawn by
blind children of different ages. As shown, one
table is drawn from above, the second from underneath,
and the third from the side. Figure 5
(Kennedy, 1980) shows the side view of a
hexagonal box with adjacent sides shown angling
off, by adding brief lines horizontally to each
corner. This drawing was produced by a fourteen-year-old
from Phoenix. This child had been
blinded before the age of two and had been left
with minimal light perception.
There is not only good evidence that blind
people can draw objects from the side but that
they also can understand drawings and occasionally
have produced drawings with convergent
perspective. In these drawings the convergent
perspective technique is used to show what
is near and what is far. The railroad tracks drawn
by a blind woman in figure 6 demonstrates this
understanding of the convergent perspective.
(The "v" mark shows her location in the middle
of the picture).
What about events in static pictures? So far,
research has focused on the depiction of two
kinds of events: people walking or running and
wheels moving. Research has shown that blind
adults say that events are impossible to depict
directly in a static picture. They comment that
you have to do something imaginary.
Blind people have used four types of techniques
to suggest movement in a drawing: postural
devices, additional graphics, shape distortions,
and context devices.
A postural device involves changing the posture
of an animal or human in an unusual way to
suggest that the animal or human is moving. For
example, figure 7 shows that when a six-year-old
blind boy was asked to draw a man running, he
first drew a man standing still. To show that the
man was running, he extended the legs to make
them "real long." Amused, he went on to make
the man's arms "real long" too, to show how
strong he was and to show how fast he was running.
To emphasize how fast he was running, he
turned impishly to the man's ears and made them
"real long" as well.
A variety of similar but more sophisticated
techniques have been employed by blind adults.
Figure 8 (Kennedy, 1982) is a drawing from a
congenitally blind adult which shows a man walking.
Graphic additions in front of the man's feet
have been used to show the man taking steps.
Another raised-line drawing of a man walking
produced by an early totally blind adult (blinded
before two) is shown in figure 9 (Kennedy, 1980).
It uses a slightly different principle. The subject
said that "His legs must look as though they're
walking. His right leg is forward. That's why it's
bigger and longer, more stretched out, as if he's
coming out of the page toward you." This is
another postural device.
When asked to draw a wheel spinning, blind
adults have employed a variety of techniques.
One technique involves curving the spokes to
suggest that the wheel is spinning. Another technique
involves making the circumference of the
wheel oblong, with some spokes short and some
spokes long as in figure 10 (Kennedy, 1980).
Context devices are often very useful in drawing.
For example, drawing a wheel on the down
slope of a hill could suggest that the wheel is
rolling.
Thus, blind children and adults can draw from
a point of view. They can also draw simple events
like walking, running, or wheels in motion.
DRAWING, PICTURE PERCEPTION,
AND SPATIAL COGNITION
IN THE BLIND
by Dr. Morton A. Heller
Editor's Note: The following article is from the
paper Dr. Heller prepared for the "Pictures and the
Blind" symposium. He teaches and pursues his
research in the area of tactile perception of the
blind at Winston-Salem State University (Department
of Psychology), North Carolina. He has also
published articles in Perception and Perception and Psychophysics magazines.
For some time now, I have been concerned
with the study of tactile perception in the sighted
and blind. A surprising number of researchers
have fallen prey to the "myth" of the perceptual
superiority of the sighted over persons born
blind. The source of this prejudice probably
derives from the introspection of the sighted,
with only occasional recourse to data. Many
sighted persons rely on visual imagery to recall
spatial locations. In addition they may experience
visual images when touching shapes in the dark.
Thus, some researchers have proposed that the
sighted normally recode tactile impressions into
visual images. Revesz claimed that touch can
only provide a vague conception of shape and
tends to delete detail. Some researchers have
then assumed that the congenitallv blind, who
presumably lack visual imagery, must not understand
the world properly. Of course, this is a
rather crude description of a theoretical position,
but it is probably accurate. Unfortunately, this
line of reasoning fails to note the possibility that
other forms of imagery may serve as well as visual
imagery and could be superior for some forms of
spatial cognition.
A few researchers have reported that the early
blind may not perform as well as the sighted or
late blind on a number of tactual and spatial tasks
(Warren, 1984) and this deficiency has been
ascribed to a lack of visual imagery in the early
blind. An alternative point of view has been
presented by Lederman and Klatzy (in press),
who argue that visual imagery is only necessary
when observers are confronted with two-dimensional
arrays, there they claim touch is deficient.
They suggest that visual recoding is not needed
where touch will serve to provide the needed
information, as with complex three-dimensional
arrays that also include texture cues. In an experiment
I conducted two years ago, sighted, early,
and late blind observers made relative smoothness
judgments with either active or passive
touch. The superiority of the sighted or late blind
in texture judgments would implicate the
benefits of visual imagery for texture perception,
but the results showed no differences between
the sighted, late, or congenitally blind. These
results suggest that visual imagery is no help in
texture perception tasks.
In a second experiment I also found that touch
was superior to vision in texture perception for
very smooth surfaces. Thus, sight is not always a
benefit. Just the other day, for example, I experienced
pain from a small fiber that was embedded
in my fingertip. The tiny fiber was invisible to the naked eye, but could be seen under
eight-power magnification. However, the naked
skin had no problem feeling the stimulus. This
sort of experience makes one wonder about the
notion that the sense of touch operates like
blurred (hence defective) vision.
Of more immediate interest is a study I conducted
on picture perception in the sighted and
blind. I used raised-line drawings produced with
the Swedish drawing kit. (The Swedish raised
line drawing kit is far superior to the Sewell
drawing kit. The Sewell kit generates lines that
collapse as one feels them.) I wondered if relatively
familiar objects would pose difficulties for
the sighted and blind.
In addition to showing pictures to my subjects
in this study, I asked them to engage in a simple
shape matching task. The stimuli were embossed
patterns produced with a six by six array of dots.
The results showed that the eleven late-blind and
the eleven early-blind individuals performed
slightly better than the eleven sighted subjects
and were much faster than the sighted group.
Again, there is no support for the visual imagery
position.
The picture recognition task in that study entailed
first showing the subjects the pictures, one
by one, and asking for identification. Subjects
were not told how to feel the pictures, nor were
they given time limits. All subjects were encouraged
to guess if uncertain. They were told
the pictures represented common things or
nouns. They were not given any size constraints.
Finally, after attempting to name the pictures
without feedback, I told the subjects the names
that described the set of pictures. I then showed
them the pictures in a different order and asked
them to name them.
The late-blind were far better than the other
subjects. Furthermore, they maintained this advantage.
The sighted were no better than the
congenitally blind, an outcome that is inconsistent
with the idea that visual imagery is essential
for tactile space perception.
The experiments suggest, to me at least, that
the advantage of the late-blind is probably due to
two factors. They have better tactile spatial skills
than the sighted, and furthermore, they have experience
with the nature of drawing and representing
objects in two dimensions. This leads to
their superiority over the congenitally blind in
these experiments. These results also suggest
that blind persons in general are likely to show
great improvement in their ability to make sense
out of tactile pictures. While some subjects did
very well initially, some did not. But even these
subjects showed rapid gains with experience.
Many individuals, both early- and late-blind,
expressed an interest in obtaining drawing kits.
They seemed to enjoy drawing. Several congenitally
blind subjects who had never learned to
write their names were able to immediately copy
their initials. A number produced interesting
drawings. These individuals wished to obtain the
drawing kits to write with, to draw maps with, and
to draw with. I should point out that a couple of
subjects who initially protested that they could
never draw, were later able to do so.
I am presently completing a study of
perspective-taking in the blind. The task uses a
variant of the Piagetian three-mountain scene.
Piaget asked children to view three mountains
and then imagine how the scene looks to people
in a different position. Young children are
egocentric and fail to take the point of view of the
other when tested with photographs. I wondered
if the blind, especially the congenitally blind,
could go beyond egocentrism and take a number
of perspectives. One might think this would be a
problem if space can only be known visually. For
example, this seems implicit in Piaget's description
of the child's understanding of the a straight
line, the demonstration of which is dependent on
the use of a method of sighting. Piaget probably
never read Diderot's Letters on the Blind where
he described a blind mathematician that used
strings to represent straight lines.
I used three shapes in this experiment and
three groups of subjects: early-blind, late-blind,
and sighted controls. I first asked subjects to
name the shapes after feeling them. Many subjects,
both sighted and blind, did not name them
correctly. For example, some people referred to
the cone as a funnel. I then asked the subjects to
draw top and side views of each shape. Subsequently,
I showed the subjects raised-line
drawings I had made and asked them to identify
them. Then, subjects were asked to draw a bird's
eye view and a frontal side view of the pictures.
The subjects were asked to anticipate side views
as the array would be seen at 90, 180, and 270
degree positions. That is, subjects were asked to
draw how the array would appear to someone
sitting on their right, opposite them, and on their
left (without feedback).
Finally, I showed the subjects the five drawings,
twice each in a random order, and asked
them to identify the point of view of the perceiver
(i.e., the person that drew the picture). Since I
have not completed this research, the results are
tentative, of course, but the sighted do not appear
to have any great advantage when denied vision.
You should be aware that touch is rather sensitive
to orientation shifts. This may be especially
likely for unfamiliar patterns, but also occurs with
highly familiar shapes. Sighted subjects show performance
losses when making visual matches to
Braille patterns they touch when the Braille is
tilted. Blind subjects may show performance losses
for tactile stimuli that are tilted. Visual
guidance and spatial frame of reference information
may help the sighted. That is, it is a help to
be able to see one's hand in relationship to the
environment. Visual guidance of touch is unavailable
to the blind who might benefit from
other aids. For example, spatial frameworks or
line guides might be needed to aid in drawing and
pattern recognition.
Conclusions: My research indicates that
visual experience is not necessary for understanding
tactile drawings, nor is it essential for
adopting the perspective of another person.
When we objectively examine the spatial cognition
of the blind, we find that the sighted do not
necessarily have any advantage. If anything, the
late blind perform much better than the sighted.
Congenitally blind people are capable of far
more than some people give them credit for. I
heartily concur with Susanna Millar who has said
that it is time to stop designing research to ask
what the blind cannot do. We should be in the
business of finding out what people can do. Congenitally
blind persons can make and understand
drawings and can certainly adopt perspective. It
is a very risky business for anyone to assume that
individuals can't do something. Educational level
is not a good predictor of spatial skills, nor is the
cause of blindness necessarily an accurate index.
I believe that increased exposure to drawings will
help the blind understand and represent space.
Tactile drawings can be of inestimable
benefit. I spent a great deal of time drawing as a
child and can't imagine how my mental life would
have developed without this experience. I have come to believe that a major impediment to the
intellectual development of the blind derives
from prejudice within society and the limitations
we sometimes have placed on their education. (Emphasis added by editor.)
Note: The "Ideas for Art Lesson Plans," which
were distributed at the symposium by John M.
Kennedy, Paul Gabias, and Morton A. Heller,
are available from the NFB Parents of Blind
Children Division for a donation of $2.00 (to
cover costs of postage and handling). Send request
and donation (made payable to National
Federation of the Blind, POBC) to:
Ideas for Art Lesson Plans for the Blind
NFB Parents Division
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230.
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