Double blind test series

Braille is a communication tool in decline, in America by 80% since 1950, and in the UK to the extent that only 1% of blind people are now thought to read Braille.1, 2 There are a variety of causal factors, including the phasing out of Braille instruction due to the educational mainstreaming of blind children and the resistance to learning Braille by those who lose sight later in life.3Braille is a writing system of raised dots that allows blind people to read and write tactilely. Each Braille character comprises a cell of six potentially raised dots, two dots across and three dots down. It is designed only to communicate the message and does not convey the tonality provided by visual fonts.However, in his book Design Meets Disability, Graham Pullin, observes that: “Braille is interesting and beautiful, as abstract visual and tactile decoration, intriguing and indecipherable to the nonreader ” and continues; “…braille could be decorative for sighted people.”4I assert that the increasing abandonment of Braille frees it from its restrictive constraints, opening it to exploration and experimentation, and that this may result in Braille becoming dynamic expression for the sighted, as well as the partially sighted and blind.Printmaking is well suited for this exploration. Printmaking processes and techniques can result in prints aesthetically compelling to both senses of sight and touch. Established approaches, such as flocking, varnishes, puff-ink, embossing and die cut, combined with experiments in new techniques in laser cutting and 3D printing, create visually and texturally vibrant prints.In this paper I will detail my systematic investigation of sensually expressive printmaking concentrating on the issues surrounding Braille as a printmaking design element paying particular attention to the approaches and techniques used not only in producing its visual style but to those techniques used to keep it integrally tactile.

Missing women: policing absence

This paper considers the neglected mobilities associated with a sample of UK women reported as missing.Refracted through literatures on gendered mobility and abandonment, the paper argues that the journeys of thesewomen in crisis are not well understood by police services, and that normative gender relations may infuse theirmanagement. By selectively exploring one illustrative police case file on Kim, we highlight how reported andobserved socio-spatial relationships within private and public spaces relate to search actions. We argue that Kim’smobility and spatial experiences are barely understood, except for when they appear to symbolise disorder anddanger. We address the silences in this singular case by using the voices of other women reported as missing, ascollected in a research project to explore the agency, experience and meaning of female mobility during absence.We argue that women reported as missing are not abandoned by UK policing services, but that a policy ofcontinued search for them may be at risk if they repeatedly contravene normative socio-spatial relationshipsthrough regular absence mobilities. By way of conclusion, we address recent calls for research that explores therelationships between gender and mobility.