Maps for the Future

Abstract

This article aims to present the results and analyses of research whose main objective was to investigate how visually impaired people are able to learn and draw as well as what the importance is of acquiring the concept of spatial representation for reading, interpretation and analysis of tactile cartographic documents by this segment of the population. The data and analyses presented in this paper were collected from a Special School and a Children’s Rehabilitation Center. The research concluded that a blind child develops this concept in the same way as any other child: they acquire the concept of the permanent object, acquire semantic memory and graphic act, attribute sensory and physical meaning to the graphic act and show difficulties to draw locations and objects that do not possess significance in their experience of life.