Tactile Cartography and Geography Teaching: LEMADI’s Contributions

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the experiences on Tactile Cartogra- phy collected at LEMADI (Laboratory of Teaching and Didactic material of the Geography Department—Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, University of Sa˜o Paulo-USP). This is an attempt at displaying the contributions of this work to Geography teaching. LEMADI’s researchers have been working for more than 20 years on producing, applying and evaluating geographic representations for teaching, orientation and mobility. The results from the first project as well as the materials already produced (maps, graphics, plans, illustrations, models and others) led to the formation of a permanent group attended by teachers, professionals on special education and visually disabled students. Experiences were shared by Brazilian and foreign researchers and institutions. LEMADI became a reference in Tactile Cartography not only for its tactile didactic materials used by students from elementary and high schools and college, teachers from public and private schools, parents, specialized teachers and blind people in general, but mainly for the methods developed by its researchers.