Maguire_Final paper for LU repository April 2016.pdf (825.79 kB)
A comparison of three materials used for tactile symbols to communicate colour to children and young people with visual impairments
journal contribution
posted on 2016-03-31, 13:55 authored by Sabrina Ramsamy-Iranah, Martin MaguireMartin Maguire, James A. Gardner, Satyadev Rosunee, Naraindr KistamahA series of 14 tactile symbols were developed to represent different colours and shades for children and young people who are blind or have visual impairment. A study compared three different methods for representing the symbols: (1) embroidered thread, (2) heated ‘swell’ paper, and (3) representation in plastic using Additive Manufacturing (AM; three-dimensional printing). The results show that for all three materials, the recognition of particular symbols varied between 2.40 and 3.95 s. The average times for the three materials across all colours were 2.26 s for AM material, 3.20 s for swell paper, and 4.03 s for embroidered symbols. These findings can be explained by the fact that the AM material (polylactide) is firmer and more easily perceived tactually than the other two materials. While AM plastic offers a potentially useful means to communicate colours for appropriate objects, traditional media are still important in certain contexts.
History
School
- Design
Published in
British Journal of Visual ImpairmentVolume
34Issue
1Pages
54 - 71Citation
RAMSAMY-IRANAH, S. ...et al., 2016. A comparison of three materials used for tactile symbols to communicate colour to children and young people with visual impairments. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 34(1), pp. 54-71.Publisher
© The Authors. Published by SAGE PublicationsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2016Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal British Journal of Visual Impairment and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0264619615610161ISSN
0264-6196eISSN
1744-5809Publisher version
Language
- en