ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the pictorial input can be treated metaphorically, by the blind and the sighted alike, the blind using tactile pictures and the sighted using visible pictures. It tries to show the wide range of uses of tactile metaphoric pictures by summarizing several empirical studies on blind people and their interpretations of tactile forms. The chapter presents to explain the lessons rests on a description of the tangible world, and the shapes within it, and hypotheses about outline representation in vision and touch. Metaphoric pictures are defined in relation to literal pictures, because metaphoric pictures violate the rules of literal pictures. Most emphatically, deep problems for theory of tactile pictures, tangible forms, and metaphoric images are created by the relation between perception and information. Much of the power of metaphoric communication arises from its capacity to invoke classifications.
