NASA Unveils Space for the Blind
“The book showed me galaxies that are far away and what they look like through a telescope,” said Terry Garrett, a freshman at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind, in Colorado Springs. “I never knew that we could take pictures of things that were that far away,” said Garrett, who was one of 22 students to evaluate the book during development.
Since 1990, NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope have brought beautiful space imagery to those who can see–opening up space of distant galaxies and neighboring planets. Now, a new book by NASA has done the same for those who are visually impaired entitled, “Touch the Universe: A NASA Braille Book of Astronomy.”
This book shows images of the universe’s “most dramatic celestial features” including test in Braille which allows the images to become visible to the viewer’s fingertips. How this develops is through the thick paper of the book, as the images are embossed throughout the most dominant features. Lines and various textures help the blind person identify gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and planets–with the textures using dots, parallel lines, squiggles, and curves–allowing the person to touch the stars and trace their movements on paper.
Photographs such as newborn stars of the Eagle nebula or Hubble Deep Field are just a few of the beautiful images of the Hubble Space Telescope. Collaboration between author Noreen Grice and Bernhard Beck-Winchatz, a DePaul University astronomer in Chicago, developed the book with a United States $10,000 Hubble Space Telescope grant for educational outreach.
In 1990, Grice had published a book of Braille on astronomy called “Touch the Stars,” a general astronomy book on constellations, galaxies, and planets. Beck-Wincatz saw the book later on and attempted to produce tactile pictures on the Hubble images, with both individuals working together with the same approach in this latest book.
“It was an ongoing process of tweaking the feel of what you and I see,” said Wentworth. Unlike sighted people, blind people “look” at parts individually to piece together the whole picture. “It’s like constructing a jigsaw puzzle without a picture.”
“Too many bumps or raised lines, like too many pieces, can create confusion. When it comes to creating tactile images, less is more, said Wentworth. “When they could feel the picture, they experienced clarity.”
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Public Relations, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
