With a focus on learning materials, Phase One of the Reginald Phillips Research Programme explored expectations concerning graphicacy at primary school level for both sighted and visually impaired children, and went on to document the experiences of visually impaired pupils and their teachers in using tactile graphics. It comprised three stages which are outlined below. The work was successfully completed in December 2000.

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Graphicacy at primary school level

At the outset of the research we wanted to establish what standard of graphicacy is required of children at primary school, and to review the available guidance for converting visual graphics to a tactile format for blind primary school children. The education and research literature reveals little about what constitutes graphicacy amongst sighted primary school children and virtually nothing about graphicacy for blind children that age. We therefore started from first principles, reviewing science books used in mainstream primary schools, analysing the National Curriculum as it bears on graphicacy, and examining the R.N.I.B.'s guidelines for translating public examination papers. Two papers arose from this stage of our research.

In the first paper (Graphicacy: The fourth 'R'?) we look at graphicacy in the sighted context, consider what primary school children need to know to understand the graphics they encounter, argue that graphicacy is an important aspect of literacy, and offer teachers some practical suggestions for making graphicacy explicit within the teaching agenda.

In the second paper (Tactile graphics: A beginner's guide to graphics for visually impaired children) we offer a basic introduction to the design and use of tactile graphics in the classroom. The paper is particularly aimed at people who may be called upon to provide support for a visually impaired child in a classroom context for the first time. We outline the common methods for producing tactile graphics, consider which graphics are worth 'translating' into tactile form, offer some pointers for making this translation, and suggest a procedure for supporting a child in using tactile graphics.

See Our Publications for the full text of these papers.

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Challenges of tactile graphics from the perspective of pupils

In the production of many products, collecting user feedback has come to play an important part in the design cycle. As far as we are aware, however, no-one has previously explored the attitudes and experiences of visually impaired pupils regarding tactile graphics.

To explore the experiences and attitudes of pupils, we devised a focus group format which allowed participants to raise issues they considered important, rather than our pre-judging what those issues might be. Using this focus group method we collected the views of 40 primary and secondary pupils at special schools. Analysis of the focus group discussions identified a number of issues regarding tactile graphics from the users' point of view, some of which were unanticipated.

The results of the study are reported in our paper 'Tactile graphics in school education: perspectives from pupils'. See Our Publications for the abstract of this paper.

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Challenges of tactile graphics from the perspective of teachers

Teachers are in the unique position of selecting, designing, and using tactile graphics in the context of lessons they have planned, and with children whose abilities they know. In this they are unlike specialist producers who may have no teaching experience and little contact with the pupils who use their graphics. However, reports in the literature are generally from specialist producers of tactile graphics (who focus on issues of production rather than use) or from academic researchers. It is rare to hear the views of teachers. We felt it was important to find out about teachers' experiences with tactile graphics in the classroom, and to document their principal concerns. Following a number of in-depth one-to-one interviews with teachers, we devised a postal questionnaire designed to allow participants to raise the issues of greatest concern to them personally. Using the questionnaire we collected the views of 24 teachers working with visually impaired children in special and mainstream schools.

The results of the questionnaire study are reported in our paper 'Tactile graphics in school education: perspectives from teachers'. See Our Publications for the abstract of this paper.