Tactile Drawing

The process of creating raised-line images that can be perceived through touch rather than vision. Tactile drawing can be done by blind or sighted people using methods such as drawing on swell paper with a thermo pen to produce immediately raised lines, using a stylus on plastic film placed over a rubber mat, or using computer-based tools that combine digitizer input with tactile output. Research has shown that blind people can produce meaningful tactile drawings that represent real-world objects, though their depiction methods differ from visual conventions — blind drawers tend to preserve object topology and draw from the most tactilely recognizable viewpoint rather than using visual perspective.