Simplification Of Painting Images For Tactile Perception By Visually Impaired Persons

The access to artworks by visually impaired people requires a simplified tactile representation of paintings. This paper presents the difficulties of direct transcription of artworks and the test results of simplification of the paintings done by Australian Aborigines which don't have purely visual elements such as shadows or perspective. The implemented methodology is bottom-up: it starts with tactile representation of basic elements relevant to the understanding of the whole painting, then their association into more complex concepts. The context of associations is explained through audio-description. The results of the tests with visually impaired persons are analyzed and explained.