Иллюстрированная книга для слепых
The Illustrated Book for the Blind
Ілюстрована книга для сліпих
Муниципалитет г. Генуя, Генуя, Италия
Municipality of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Муніципалітет м.Генуї, Генуя, Італія
Слепой человек может чувствовать написанное с помощью оригинальной разработки, предложенной Брейлем в начале ХХ века. Зрячий также может видеть брейлевский текст. Для этого нужно знать алфавит. Обеспечение слепому читателю возможности видеть образ связано с массой проблем. Оригинальный образ можно оставить без изменения, только следует немного приподнять края изображения, чтобы его можно было нащупать пальцами. Однако таким способом невозможно передать образ фотографии или картинки, поскольку заключенная в них информация не может быть передана с помощью тактильных линий. Был найден выход в виде возможности представления слепому читателю информации об объекте или событии в виде графического изображения. Такой способ неизмеримо сокращает количество линий. Но в любом случае графическое представление объекта очень слабо напоминает сам объект в реальности.
Однако это на первый взгляд непреодолимое препятствие неожиданно внесло серьезный вклад в решение этой якобы не решаемой проблемы.
A written text may be clearly felt by a blind reader through the different solutions all revolving around the basic idea introduced by Braille at the beginning of the century. This technique, in reality, is only a translitteration of the original text where the printed letters are transformed in an equivalent sign. A braille text can be easily "seen" by a sighted reader and a simple knowledge of the new "alphabet" is sufficient to understand the text.&&&&&An enormously different set of problem is to make comprehensible an image to a blind reader. In this case the original image may be left totally unchanged and the only one operation which has to be applied is the physical modification of the image w hich becomes "readable" through the introduction of raised edges which are felt by the fingertips of the reader. But this operation will be totally impossibile with a picture Англія, a photographic picture, where the immense amount of information which ca n be easily dealt with by the visual system as a complex local variation of the luminance contrast cannot be translated into tactual stimuli. What can be presented to the blind reader is a "picture" in the sense of a graphical representation of an event or an object. This type of object reduces drastically the number of lines and makes possibile the discriminations between one element and the next one. This second line of solution, encounters with a major drawback, however. Under all possible circumstances a drawing rests upon a very complex tangle of representational rules which are only very weakly linked with the optical or visual appreareacne of the objects in the real word. This difficolty, in reality forbidding at firts sight had became, quite unespectedly, a strong aaly into this quasi unsoluble problem.
Сліпа людина може відчувати написане за допомогою оригінальної розробки, запропонованої Брайлем на початку ХХ століття. Зряча також може бачити брайлівський текст. Для цього необхідно знати алфавіт.
Надання сліпому читачу можливості бачити образ пов’язано з безліччю проблем. Оригінальний образ можна залишити без змін, тільки потрібно дещо припідняти кінці зображення, щоб його можна було відчути пальцями. Але, таким чином неможливо передати образ фотографії або малюнку, оскільки закладена в них інформація не може бути передана за допомогою тактильних ліній. Було знайдено вихід - представлення сліпому читачеві об’єкт або подію у вигляді графічного зображення. Такий спосіб непомірно скорочує кількість ліній. Але в будь-якому випадку графічне представлення об’єкту дуже слабо нагадує реальний об’єкт. Одначе ця, на перший погляд, нездоланна перешкода зненацька допомогла розв’язати цю проблему, яку здавалось неможливо було вирішити.
If taken at face value this title can only be considered as a good example of bad taste and of an insensitive mind. But a frequentation of blind people of all ages and conditions will immediately reveal in them a strong interest for images. The only problem resides into the translation code from the visual to the tactual mode. Because the blind uses in general the same language of the sighted he/ she utilizes terms, expressions, lexikons where the allusions to the visual word are pervasive and continuous. These terms are so deeply interwined with the common language that the elimination of them from the communication system would be the result of a strenuous and deeply frustrating effort. This being the situation the blind will communicate freely and efficiently using a language where the information coming from the sight are endemic but they, at least apparently, do not present particularly difficult problems.
A book written in Braille or perceived along the audio channel will retain almost all its intrinsic information and will provide the reader with an information content practically undistinguable from the reading of the sighted. But it is a well known fact that, since the beginning of the book, either as papyri or codes or the early printed copies, illustrations have always accompained the written text. This fact poses an immense problem but only when the illustration provides a significant amount of information which could be not ignored and whose knowledge is essential to the comprehension of the text. This condition is not common, however, because in a very large amount of cases the illustrations have played a minimal role in information and their observations have added almost nothing to the text . But this limited importance, nevertheless, does not reduce the aesthetic importance of the presence of the illustrations in a book. One of the most beautifully illustrated book of the early Renaissance, the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”, presents a series of marvellous xylographs which do not add any particular importance to the text but whose elegance plays an essential role in the general economy of this book.
This being taken into consideration we are faced with two quite different sets of problems: to introduce images in books where they are conveying important and significant information and to present illustrations inserted into the text for the sheer pleasure of them. These two different problems must be worked out along two quite different strategies.
Let consider at this point two examples: in a textbook there is an critical plot relating two different physical variables one to the another. The plot, for example , will show the variation along the year of the temperature in a given environment. In this case the drawing, when rendered in relief, with the well known technique of the raised line drawing, has only to be identical under any detail to the printed template. If the blind has received a basic teaching about the structural form of a graph he/ she will have no difficulty to individuate the hottest months of the year, the coldest one and many other , even delicate, details of the whole function. The direct exploration of the raised line plot will convey into the tactual mode all the necessary information and practically nothing will be lost.
Let consider now a more complex illustration: for example a car which passes in front of a house having a tree at its left. In this case the main problem is the disambiguation of the state of the car. Is the car in motion or it is motionless ? Or if the illustration shows two cars running at different velocities how can the blind figure out which is the faster one ? In this case the immense repertoire of the graphical metaphors dealing with the representation of the speed will be pillaged and, at the end, translated in raised line drawings. It is extremely clear that the illustrations of this kind have to be utterly simplified and with an extreme reduction in the density of signs. But long and fruitfull experiences have shown that the blind, in particular in the young age, are very good at understanding the meaning of the most common graphical metaphores dealing with the movement.
The most complex example deals with the “artistic” illustration. In this case the information is relatively insignificant and it can be conveyed with a very simplified pattern. What makes the illustration beautiful and lovely to look at is its intrinsic quality of elegance, fluency of line and overall balance. In this case, not yet explored at my knowledge, it may be interesting to produce “abstract drawings” where the information is deeply rooted into the beauty of the pattern and the informative content is significantly reduced. The tactual exploration with the finger tips of the raised line drawing, even if its content is mainly “ abstract” it may result into a sheer pleasure quite similar to the visual one.
In all the cases to take seriously the problem of the illustrated book for the blind it may results into an intelligent, useful and profitable action.