Presented at 1:45 pm in Matchless on Thursday, November 20, 2025.
#41213Speaker(s)
- Em Kribs, Manager of Academic Accommodations and Accessibility, Wichita State University
Session Details
- Length of Session: 1-hr
- Format: Lecture
- Expertise Level: All Levels
- Type of session: General Conference
Summary
Braille materials are key for ensuring accessibility for students with visual impairments. Students without visual impairments, however, often have access to figures and diagrams that illustrate concepts in multiple ways and create additional avenues for student comprehension. Creating tactile graphics can be intimidating, but the positive impact on student learning is worth it.
Abstract
Braille materials are key for ensuring accessibility for students with visual impairments. Students without visual impairments, however, often have access to additional figures and diagrams that illustrate concepts in multiple ways and create other avenues for student comprehension. Image descriptions can help, but they tend to demand more effort to understand and often fail to capture the relationships between ideas. One solution is tactile graphics.
However, a high-quality tactile graphic is not usually achieved by simply converting the text to braille and embossing the original image. One must account for differences in both technology and physiology; embossers produce “lower resolution” images than printers, and sight tends to afford more acuity than touch. Obstacles to conversion may include color coded information, dense text, three-dimensional models, overlapping components, and basically any diagram pertaining to biology.
This presentation will explain in greater detail the considerations involved in converting graphic materials to a tactile format, including technological limitations, formatting, and rhetoric.
Keypoints
- Tactile graphics can reduce the BVI user’s cognitive load and improve learning outcomes.
- Touch is different from vision, and tactile graphics need to be adjusted accordingly.
- Understanding the purpose and meaning of a graphic helps to preserve that rhetoric in a tactile format.
Disability Areas
Vision
Topic Areas
Alternate Format, Uncategorized
Speaker Bio(s)
Em Kribs
Em Kribs is the manager for Academic Accommodations and Accessibility, which primarily involves adapting course materials for students with visual impairments. She holds a master's degree in communication from Wichita State University, and a bachelor's degree in languages, literatures, and cultures from Colorado State University.