Hands-On Mapping: The Story of a Blind Cartographer

To celebrate it's 5th anniversary, the David Rumsey Map Center hosted Dr. Joshua Miele a blind scientist, inventor, and community leader to share his decades of experience creating innovative accessibility solutions. In addition to tactile cartography, he has made contributions to mobile wayfinding tools, video description technologies, and accessible STEM education. He is currently a Principal Accessibility Researcher at Amazon and lives in Berkeley, California. Dr. Miele talks about his story as a blind cartographer and will use the creation of TMAP – Tactile Maps Automated Production – to frame the broader landscape of how tactile maps and graphics can be used by blind people to understand many kinds of spatial information. He also discusses the power of touch as a spatial percept, as well as the design constraints on tactile representations that are surprising and challenging to most visual designers. Key topics include historical techniques for creating tactile maps, examples and counterexamples of tactile map use cases, and promising technologies for expanding the availability of accessible maps in the future. Opening remarks from G. Salim Mohammed, Michael Keller, and David and Abby Smith Rumsey. Watch the video.