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 published 2019 in Comics Forum 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 on blind media. And while my first reflections on the potential of haptic comics were more enthusiastic, this later paper in Comics Forum is rather more sceptical after more research, tests, and many discussions of tactile and other media for blind readers.

Pictorial information is spatially organised and usually intended for readers with eye-sight. Pictures are read quickly by the eye, interrelations between elements in a picture can be signalled in composition, in shading, colouring, even in the quality of the lines. But all these signals trust in the visual capacities of the reader. The impact of colour-blindness for the readability of visual information is reflected in in better graphic design education and is considered by designers when they develop signage (e.g. to direct people in buildings), pictorial information material, and so on. Partial blindness and low vision have become considered more, mostly in typography, as people grow older and more people are known to have poorer eye-sight in old age.

Ways to communicate pictorial information for blind people are usually not considered in these contexts, especially not the varieties in abilities: people who were born blind imagine the world differently from people who grew blind later in life and have experienced pictorial information before and duly understand information about images and pictorial information differently. For people who were born blind, pictures and colours are more abstract information, colours are not associated to specific objects based on visual experience, for example - images ask for a lot of imagination that is distinctly different from the imagination of sighted people who try to imagine blindness.

of course, highly specialised knowledge on media production for blind readers does exist, usually in organisations and educational institutions that are dedicated to supporting and working with blind and visually impaired readers. With growing digitalisation and automation, more and more tools have been developed that transfer text-information into accoustic information with the help of machine-reading. But these developments do not allow for blind readers to self-determine their individual reading speed. Also, re-reading parts of a sentence or paragraph, in contemplation of some advanced or double meaning etc. is much more difficult to do with audio-material than when reading on your own. In difference to that, tactile reading material allows for and demands the blind person to read for her/himself in their own speed. In this context it is crucial to understand that not all blind people can read Braille - and not all who can read the letters are able to read short-hand Braille with all its abbreviations, either. As "long-hand" Braille takes a lot of space on the page and a lot of time to read, longer texts tend to use various extends of short-hand Braille. This means that tactile reading matter is produced for a comparatively small group of readers, in usually lower numbers of copies. And that again makes reading material for blind readers expencive. Depending on where you live, your access to this kind of reading matter can be restricted, knowledgeable staff at public libraries and organisations for the support of blind people, as well as working mail services usually are crucial to overcome some of these hurdles…

When it comes to tactile representations of images or even sequential images that can include text, not only does the reader have to be able to read Braille if text is included in or accompanying the image. Also, the reader has to read the picture's spatial organised logic and make sense of the placement of pictorial elements in the space of the image that is bordered by a frame. Depending on the materials used for the tactile reproduction of an image, only a limited variety of markers can be put onto that surface to represent the image's content. While it is comparably easy for the sighted reader to understand what information is placed in a picture's foreground and what is the beackground. There is a middle ground in many images as well, if not in many caricatures or comics. The difference between foreground and background is hard to represent for the touch, as are colour palette and size-differences between pictorial objects that have to be transferred into haptic information.

For example, lines constitute a core-element in drawings, but if they are represented as one consecutive embossed shape, the length of the line becomes hard or impossible to de-cypher: the length and dynamism of a line in a drawing can easily be engraved into a hard surface (e.g. with a laser-cutter), but a blind reader who feels along such a line has to remember where the shape started in the space of that image, where it went along - the line has to be located in relation to itself and to other lines if those are given. A line has no set length when it is felt, no scale is indicated if it is not expressed as a line of dots, which represent smooth lines only roughly. In a picture's tactile representation, no relation between objects can quckly be checked, all has to be felt again and again.

The transfer of a composition consisting of coloured shapes into tactile information is equally tricky. As the amount of stylistic variation is limited for haptic reception, the composition of an image is usually simplified, scaled, and represented in shapes that are filled in ways that allow to feel the difference between these shapes: children's books use areas of sand-paper-quality in difference to rubberised or filled with equally spaced punches, etc. All this so that the reader imagines the interrelation of shapes in the picture. Imagine how difficult it is then to add colour information or express nuances in forms and shapes. Reading a picture demands hard combinatory work and carefull tactile assessment of the matter. And reading a visual joke cannot be a quick thing, then. That is why most transfers of images into tactile information do not manage to communicate why these images are remarkable for visual people.

Being blind is obviously very different from being sighted. Access to spatial imformation can be vital for navigating a place like a railway station or municipal offices, if no sighted guide is available or if we are serious about empowerment. If you have to rely on the help of guides to reach your train or the tax offices, you might chose to go there less - or you might not be able to go there at all. That is why tactile maps are placed in these kinds of places, ideally. To continue on that thought, how crucial is access to pictures, to narrations in sequences of images? The nuances of a picture might not be expressable for haptical reading, they can be described in a text that accompanies and explains the pictures, but this is interpeting the image in a different medium, too. While some pictorial information can be transfered, other information cannot be expressed in a pictorial representation: For example, we can describe the smirk on Mona Lisa's face, we can reproduce it in paper even, but it is not readable in a comparable way. The painterly expression of a possible hint of amusement in the edges of a person's mouth might just not be a sign that conveys meaning in the reality of a blind person - what if the visual smirk lacks meaning or relevance as the mood behind it would be expressed differently by and for a blind person? To make blind readers read and understand images can be rather patronising and it is absolutely imperative to reflect carefully what images are to be transfered into haptic information and for what purpose. Recognitions of motivations, needs, advantages as well as disadvantages can only really happen where the people concerned are involved in the taking of decisions. The crucial decision is to not exclude from access to information but rather in what way the information can be related in meaningful ways. This asks for self-critical reflection of motives and selections of what pictorial information matters for blind readers. When Phillip Meyer started his work, and later, when Rainer Witte and me experimented with different ways to design pictorial matter for blind readers, we were lucky to be told by our test-readers that some of these representations are meaningless, that they do not relate to their reality: a city's skyline, the distinct shape of the sillouette of a church, the shape of houses and trees in a street are not re-cognisable, they might be decodable if these shapes have been learned to be read previously, but they remain un-relateable.

If you want to start to look into the logic of Braille typography, here you can download the basic Braille-alphabet on one sheet of paper. Please not that these signs only work within a certain size-range: large titles at the top of a page do not make sense for tactile reading, nor can footnotes be given in minute writing - differences between the letters could not be felt, then! 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!

My more systematic research into media for blind people, especially image and comics for blind readers, was triggered by Philipp Meyer's projekt mentioned above. Then, it developed over many years in a research projekt that I had the luck to conduct with Rainer F.V. Witte in Marburg. My learning and understanding benefitted and continues to benefit from his huge experience in producing and developing media for blind people, his library, and his network of contacts grown during his work at blista, even though he himself has recently left us. His humour and dedication have enriched our project and I remain very grateful for all his time and commitment.

The details of my papers on the issue so far are these (some work on tactile images has not been turned into published papers, yet):
Comics für Blinde und Sehbehinderte?" Keynote presented at "Un/Sichtbare Comicwelten. NEXTCOMiC-Festival 2022" organised by Barbara M. Eggert: Kunstuniversität Linz, 4. & 5. März 2022. Here is a link to download the presentation.
"Blind readers and comics - reflecting on comics' storytelling from a different perspective." in: Comics Forum, 2019
"Comics for the Blind and for the Seeing" in: International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 16:1, Spring 2014; 477-486.