When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel’ one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes as curves lines. When asked about these curves’ they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than’ say’ broken or wavy lines or any other kind of line’ for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover’ I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.

To search out these answers’ I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels’ depicting spokes with lines that curved’ bent’ waved’ dashed and extended beyond the perimeters of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling’ spinning fast’ spinning steadily’ jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.

All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. _Q32 Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes’ they thought; suggested that the wheel was wobbling’ and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. _Q30 Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that _Q31 dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.

In addition’ the favoured description for the sighted was favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more’ the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind’ _Q29 the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently’ however’ the blind not only figured out the meaning for each of the motion’ but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.

Part 2

We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart-choosing that symbol’ she said’ to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu’ a doctoral student from china’ I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.

We gave a list of twenty _Q33 pairs of words to _Q35&36 sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a _Q34 square. For example’ we asked: what goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?

All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle’ instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong’ respectively. And only 51% linked _Q37 deep to circle and shallow to square. (see Fig. 2) When we tested four totally _Q38 blind volunteers using the same list’ _Q39 we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man’ who had been blind since birth’ scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus’ assigning ‘far’ to square and ‘near’ to circle. In fact’ only a small majority of sighted subjects’ 53%’ had paired far and near to the opposite partners. _Q40 Thus we concluded that the blind interprets abstract shapes as sighted people do.

Fig.2 Subjects were asked which word in each pair fits best with a circle and which with a square. These percentages show the level of consensus among sighted subjects.

Attempt full reading test…