Hoëlle Corvest, President of DUGTA Association
Tactile images: production, dissemination, pedagogy
The opportunities of gaining knowledge about the environment, art, science, architecture, and nature, by means of touch remain very limited for severely visually handicapped people.
Hoëlle and her co-workers propose to form an international group that will edit, propagate and disseminate affordable high-quality tactile books, with images based on the principle of orthogonal projection, in different languages.
In this session Hoëlle will discuss a couple of best practices from her long and thorough experience, showing the potential of using this principle of orthogonal projection to transfer knowledge and allow blind people to form an exact mental representation of objects and concepts and gain full understanding of the dimensions, proportions and position in space of its parts or elements.
Hoëlle has been working in the Cité de Science as the officer, responsible for giving inclusive access to blind and visually impaired persons to the collection as well as expositions. She was involved in scientific research from 1988 to 2001 with important organisations like the Louvre, INSHEA (institute for SEN-education) and the Patrimoine, the national organisation for French Cultural Heritage. She advised on many (audio)tactile editions. She trained over 1.000 adult blind persons and the same number of professionals in France.
Moreover DUGTA means to ensure the availability of well-trained teachers, trainers and designers.
Hoëlle, being blind herself, has a strong drive. “I was always in search of knowledge and full and proper understanding – of science, nature, art and architecture. Descriptions mostly leave a vague, unprecise or even incorrect idea or impression. This is very frustrating. A well-designed image however allows one to form a precise mental representation and proper understanding of the proportions of elements and their relative positions in space. This brings not only knowledge, but also joy and relief. It opens the way to any study and full participation in study and life”