Thursday, May 14, 2026
Online. Free and accessible to all.
About the Symposium
Before the widespread adoption of Braille in the early twentieth century, blind and seeing readers were exposed to a variety of tactile writing systems–embossed or raised print, touch art, and tactile maps. Offering ways to read through finger tips rather than eyes, new possibilities and expectations for literacy emerged. This symposium–which brings together scholars, archivists and collectors–asks: how did blind communities envision their books in the past and what can we learn from them in our present? What new forms of critical design emerged and might continue emerging in the spirit of collective access? Presenters attend to the ways the many iterations of tactile print inform the techniques of printing and binding, early histories of education, practices of archival preservation, and the challenges of describing and categorizing these plentiful but often unaccounted for tactile materials both in the classroom and for the larger public.
Symposium Home 