Mind mapping for people who are blind

From WikIT
Revision as of 04:49, 18 January 2011 by imported>WikITSysop (→‎Pictorial guides)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

This is a community page where WikIT hopes to help a blind person who asked on Twitter about products to help him in a course. He “will need to do many mind maps for a course” and says, and “do you know anything on Pictorial Guides?? it’s another thing i need to use in this economics course. thanks!”

This is a challenge, need I say, because mapping of any sort is intensely visual. It is my hope that the mapping community can come together to help this person, and if we are successful, provide a future reference to others.

If you can add your expertise to this page, please create an account, and jump in and edit. If you’re not familiar with wiki editing (as you can see this is based on the same software as Wikipedia) please tweet @roygrubb and I will arrange for any information you can send me to be added.

Products[edit]

At present he is using:

On Windows

On Mac OS X and iOS

Needs[edit]

The above products are mainly aimed it making words accessible – either in Braille or read by a voice synthesizer.

To understand mind maps, a partially-sighted person might be able to use high-contrast screen settings and an enlarger, but this person is blind, so touch seems to be the only option.

Is there a device to render images as raised dots?

Are there other options?

Pictorial guides[edit]

It seems that if we have a solution for mind maps, there is a reasonable chance that it will help with any form of image, but color is likely to be a problem, if elements of a diagram are color coded.

I know something about mind mapping software but am completely ignorant about accessibility options, so I will not write any more, other than to ask all to contribute their knowledge, or point this out to anyone they know with experience in this field.

If you’re on Twitter, you might consider tweeting this:

Helping the blind engage with visual methods when a course demands it: Do you have specialist knowledge? Can you help? http://bit.ly/h25M3H

For free information about the hundreds of
visual thinking tools available, visit the

Visual Thinking Center