Exploratory procedures employed by visually impaired and blind children during joint book reading

International audienceIllustrations in storybooks not only provide a source of interest in children but support language development and literacy skills. A better understanding of how to communicate stories through tactile illustrations is a central issue for practitioners and researchers who work with visually impaired children. Recognizing tactile illustrations implies precisely perceiving the shapes and being able to associate meaning to theses representations. This study focused on the way tactile pictures were haptically explored by visually impaired and blind children during joint book reading. The aim was to determine how the task and the type of illustrations promote the haptic exploration. Children seemed to be more active and used more often the contours following procedure when they have to find the meaning of the pictures than when the meaning was given to them through reading. The 3D illustrations led to the use of more different exploratory procedures than the 2D illustrations