Seeing With My Hands

Growing up my mother often told me not to touch things in stores. She didn't want me to break anything, but really she wasn't letting me see things. I don't fault her since I always wanted to touch the expensive and breakable stuff, but it is interesting to me that we have so many things in this world that we're not supposed to touch, we're only supposed to look at them with our eyes.

In the world of someone who can't see, our hands are our eyes. The only way I "see" things these days is to touch them. So of course I think that I should get to touch mostly everything.

For the past three weeks at my job I have been practicing understanding graphics with my hands. Feeling an apple embossed is very different than touching the real thing, but the Tiger Embossers do an amazing job of producing tactile representations since the embosser can produce multiple dot heights.

This brings up the interesting question, can the blind "see" using their other senses? If you are sighted,, try spending some time with a blind fold on or just closing your eyes, and see with your hands. I think you will be amazed at what the experience is like.

What do your hands tell you? How do you think we could change our culture to encourage using our sense of touch more often?