Map use by adults with visual impairments

In this paper we summarize five experiments that were designed to investiga te how tactile maps contribute to the cognitive maps of people with visual impairments. In two experiments we demonstrated that tactile maps can contr ibute to peoples' ability to learn a route through an unfamiliar area. From the results of two further studies, we argue that compared to people with sight, people with visual impairments have greater difficulty encoding info rmation from a map. We considered this directly in a fifth experiment by in vestigating how people with visual impairments search and learn a map. We f ound that they used less efficient strategies than people with sight. We co nclude that tactile maps are an important source of geographical informatio n when people need to learn about new environments, but we also point out t hat to benefit most from tactile maps people need to encode the map informa tion as effectively as possible. As people with visual impairments do not a lways use the most appropriate encoding strategies we suggest that tactile map users might benefit from greater experience and training in map encodin g strategies.