This 43-minute video presentation by Karen Poppe from American Printing House for the Blind (APH) provides a comprehensive overview of the progression of tactile skills that are prerequisites for an understanding of tactile graphics. The stages of tactile skills are:

1. Exploration of real objects
2. Symbolic understanding
   • using thermaforms to represent objects
   • flip books with photographs and raised illustrations
   • tactile beads to match with cards with raised images
   • Picture Maker for tactile maps with miniature landmarks to greater abstraction
3. Spatial concepts
   • Tactile Treasures with shapes and shapes inside/outside of shape; near/far; left/right/center
   • Picture Maker can be used to put shapes above/below, inside/outside
4. Scanning techniques
   • lines from top to bottom, left to right
   • point symbols
5. Understanding perspective
   • trace top of tapered cup and bottom of cup.  How are these the same? (round) Different? (big/little)
   • 3 dimensional textured house with cards that show house from different perspectives
   • press objects or shapes into clay and look to see what happens when the objects are pressed in from different vantage points
   • pair real object, such as a cube, with tactile representation
   • use Wikki Sticks to wrap around outer edge of cube and see how it stays a square (illustrating how a 3-dimensional object can be represented by 2-dimensional)
6. Understanding tactile terminology through basic elements of tactile graphics
   • point symbols used to represent capitols
   • line paths, such as those used to represent borders
   • aerial patterns or textures, e.g. those used to show rain forest
   • labels
7. Recreation and leisure activities
   • coloring
   • homemade tactile books
   • Squid:  Tactile Activities Magazine, similar to Highlights, with mazes, pasting, find the ones that match
   • game boards, such as Web Chase, Scattered Crowns 

General tips:

• Start early!
• Be sure that graphics are meaningful.
• Provide a variety of different textures.
• Encourage the use of graphics in recreation and leisure activities, so that there is a positive association.