The production of images that are accessible for blind people started long ago and several approaches have been tested, these cannot be discussed here. Rather, my research looks into the potential and the restrictions of sequential pictorial storytelling that is accessible for blind readers. Special attention is given to the elements of comics' narratives and the technical background of tactile text and image representation. Due to the process of giving information in tactile comics, these present an extreme challenge for readers who have been born blind, while readers that have grown blind later in life seem able to refer the elements of spatially dispersed information (that is: images) to their memory of visual information.
The paper linked here, discusses comics for the Blind and is based mainly on the example of life by Philipp Meyer. Philipp developed this haptic comic in co-operation with nota, Danmark, as an independent project on one of our comics courses at Malmö University. He certainly did not need our help with the project, but his thinking about comics was pushed by the course, indeed. I am very grateful for his project work, as it started my research in blind media. And while my first reflections on the potential of haptic comics were more enthusiastic, this later paper is rather more sceptical after more research, tests, and many discussions of tactile and other media for blind readers.
And here you can download the basic Braille-alphabet on one sheet of paper. Please note that individual letters are used differently in different languages, esp. Braille-shorthand is completely different between languages. The attached sheet shows letters, numbers and a few items in German Braille-shorthand. If there are mistakes shown on the sheet, please let me know, thank you!
The details of my papers on the issue so far are these:
"Blind readers and comics - reflecting on comics' storytelling from a different perspective." in: Comics Forum, 2019 forthcoming.
"Comics for the Blind and for the Seeing" in: International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 16:1, Spring 2014; 477-486.