From the pages of history
FROM THE PAGES OF HISTORY
It was only in the 18th century that the problems of the blind began to be addressed as a result of developments in psychology and the introduction of compulsory education. Prior to this, blind people were considered to be incapable of learning. In 1785, Valentin Haüy founded the first educational establishment for the blind in Paris, called the Royal Institute for Young Blind People. Paris' example was followed by other cities establishing similar establishments: Liverpool Edinburgh, Bristol, London, St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden. The blind were taught reading, writing, calculus, foreign languages, history and geography, music and so on. In a word, they were being prepared for life in society. In Poland, the first institution for the education of the blind was opened in Bydgoszcz in 1872.
The development of education for the blind created a need for teaching aids, including maps. For a long time, teachers only had at their disposal what they were able to produce themselves. Various types of models were therefore made at home. They used whatever was at hand: sheet metal, wood, plaster. They also glued maps onto sheets of paper using wire, string or plasticine.
In order to realise how great a development gap separates traditional cartography from tyflocartography, it suffices to say that when Eugene Romer was developing his wonderful atlases, blind children were still using hand-made models.
The first serially produced tyflomap in Poland was published in 1957 by the Cooperative of the Blind in Krakow. It was a map of Poland on a scale of 1:1,700,000, the so-called "oilcloth map". It showed the country's borders, the Baltic Sea, major rivers and lakes, mountain areas and larger cities. Most blind adults today, when asked about maps they encountered at school, mention this map. It was produced on green or blue ceramic with white raised rubber signatures. This material proved to be very useful: the map could be freely bent, rolled up and also washed under water without being damaged.
In 1983, the Polish Geographical Society and the Polish Association of the Blind organised a conference on the problem of the lack of maps for the blind and visually impaired. Representatives of the Central Office of Geodesy and Cartography, who were present at this conference, undertook to take care of the development of maps for the visually impaired. This has also been done. In cooperation with the Polish Association of the Blind, a team of specialists was set up to oversee the map-making process. The State (later Polish) Cartographic Publishing House was commissioned to develop and produce the maps. Thermal vacuum technology was chosen for map production. On the basis of a developed map, a three-dimensional mock-up is made and, using this, convex maps are pressed into plastic. This method made it possible to produce convex and colour maps simultaneously. Maps made using this technology are readable by the blind as well as the visually impaired and the sighted. This is particularly important for two reasons. Firstly, there are many visually impaired people who read maps simultaneously with their eyes and fingers. Secondly, if a blind person uses a so-called 'blind map' (convex but without colour printing), the teacher or accompanying sighted person is unable to help them.
The cooperation, which began in 1983, has resulted in a series of 43 maps on a variety of subjects. These include maps of Poland (physical, administrative, communication, economic, historical), physical, political and economic maps of the continents and selected regions, and historical maps. Unfortunately, not all of the maps were printed. However, some of them were sent to schools and to some extent satisfied the hunger for cartographic studies for the blind and visually impaired.
In 2003, the Central Office of Geodesy and Cartography came up with the initiative to produce the first atlas for the blind and visually impaired in Poland - the school Geographic Atlas of Poland. In order to publish the atlas in book form (compact), it was necessary to change the technology, as the large, stiff and convex plastic maps could not be stitched together or joined by any other means. And so with the new millennium, Polish tiffocartography entered a new technological era: maps made on exploded paper, to switch after a few years to relief printing (relief screen printing) and now, thanks to modern machines, back to printing in thermo-vacuum embossing technology with colour overprinting. The choice of printing technology is verified by its price and the durability of the product obtained. Among other technologies, which are readable and highly appreciated among the blind and visually impaired, but without widespread use in our country, is the Canadian thermographic method - the most favourable technology in terms of price for projects in small editions.