Photo-based 2.5D Reliefs for TeachingPerspective and Depth to the Visually Impaired

Abstract

The visually impaired have limited access to understanding vision-based spatial phenomena such as linear perspective, depth cues, and occlusion, which sighted people routinely use to interpret images. While prior work has highlighted the importance of making perspec- tival images accessible to blind learners, it has provided few concrete, generalizable strategies for systematically teaching pictorial space. We propose a practical and scalable approach that uses photographs (rather than canonical paintings) as the source of tactile educational material. Our pipeline estimates depth from a photograph to generate a 2.5D relief height ?eld, then fabricates tactile models via 3D printing. This photo-based route is (i) general, because photographs can be captured on-demand to exemplify speci?c spatial cues in a staged and progres- sively structured manner, and (ii) practical, because it reduces manual production burden compared to handcrafted tactile translations. We in- tegrate lessons from tactile picture perception research and present a stepwise pedagogy that begins with monocular perspective cues and ex- tends toward binocular depth concepts. We further propose a qualitative evaluation framework based on think-aloud protocols, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis to assess educational e?cacy of tactile photographs.

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