ABSTRACT
As pointed out already by the French philosopher Dennis Diderot in the late 18th century, sight is a very efficient and elegant sense (Diderot, 1749). It is possible to see great distances and very close-up views. By looking, we can quickly get an idea of an environment or a specific milieu. Through pictures on the Internet, nonfiction books, storybooks for children or magazines, we get information about, for example, different parts of the world or fashion. Sight is used to orient us in many different ways, socially and geographically. It is possible to perceive space entirely from vision, but it could be apprehended from haptic experience as well as hearing. For sighted people, hearing and haptic understanding support the visual impression, while people with visual impairment have to depend on them. This chapter will address questions about how blind children learn to use touch for a better understanding of the environment. I will here focus on how tactile pictures in storybooks can support further discussions about everyday objects and episodes, and more abstract conversations. I will also address theories about tactile and multimodal reading processes that are involved in tactile decoding, and how they relate to visual perception and visual literacy.
