TACTILE CARTOGRAPHY OF LATIN AMERICA EVALUATION AND PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The Cartography Tactile Center of Metropolitan Technological University of Santiago, Chile is carrying out investigation, map production and training activities on map uses. From the 1994 a multidisciplinary and international group meets to develop projects with the Geography and History PanAmerican Institute (GHPI) dependent from the Organization of American States (OAS). The work that is presented in this opportunity is framed inside OAS project: Design and Production of Cartography for Blind Latin America People , which is being carried out from 2002. The main objective is: The geographical space representation by means of 3D models for blind people's handling in 18 countries, 54 schools and blind benefit organisms. In the project context, the products so far have been political, physical, vegetation, climate and population maps and a geographic manual concepts, made in PVC and in third dimension with their due Braille system. INTRODUCCTION All this material is in evaluation by blind people of the benefitted countries. It is important to provide knowledge of the procedure, preparation, tabulation and cartography evaluation by the elaborated project. In the making of the evaluation test participated especially a Differential Educator, a blind adviser, Geographers and a Cartographer. A guide of the evaluation process material, will allow interaction in a more expedite and surer way, between the professor and the student. At present, a test is sent by Internet, and it should be responded on-line being connected to the web page of the Cartography Tactile Center. This allows an immediate and automatic form to store the results in a database and making of graphics. During the evaluation process the students should give their opinion regarding fundamental aspects to consider in the improvement of future cartography, such as type of material used, dimensions, portability, simbology, relationship of represented information and its climbs, clarity of simbology and legends. The obtained results of evaluations are quite encouraging and even in some schools they are already using the material before they carry out optimization processes material. For the above-mentioned, the expectations to continue the productive process and then to enlarge the sample of schools to those that will surrender the material allows us to look with optimism the deployed effort. In this same sense the expectations to enlarge the use of cartographic material towards children with other limitations, and even normal children, take us to conclude that possibilities to think integration of children in the teaching and learning process of geography can be a reality for Latin America children.

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