Introduction

In August 2011, the Minister of Education recommended the Unified Rules for the Adaptation of Textbooks and Updated Braille Notation - a group of documents governing how textbooks and other graphic aids should be adapted for blind and partially sighted students. The first document norming adaptation of graphics states the need for a specific document norming the creation and adaptation of maps for blind students. This study responds to this need.

Reading maps is a very difficult task for a blind student. The use of different signatures and different abbreviations of names for commonly known geographical objects in different publications would present further serious difficulties for him. The use of a uniform sign system on maps will allow a blind or partially sighted person reading successive maps to understand the signatures read - e.g. to realise whether the line read is a river, a road or a border. It will also make it possible to decipher abbreviations of commonly known objects without having to refer to explanatory notes. The present study, summarising the findings of hitherto existing tyflocartographic publications, will facilitate the work of mapmakers, who, having at their disposal proven rules, will focus on the substantive editing of the map and not on the graphic side of the issue. Thus, readers will find it easier to perceive the content of consecutively published maps, which the following provisions serve.

The present study does not contain provisions on how to produce city plans intended for use on foot. The norms defining the way of making city and housing estate plans in modern technologies should be prepared by a team with the participation of hipflocartographers, orientation teachers and independently moving blind people. Since standardisation of signs on European city plans began in 1983, current European standards should be taken into account in the development of Polish standards. This will make it easier for blind people travelling in Europe to read the plans.

The following standards do not establish how to make the maps needed by blind adults for higher education or professional work. Those creating maps for blind adults should know and apply the standards insofar as they have shaped the tyflocartographic culture of the adults for whom they are creating maps.