Enlightened: the art of finger reading*

Abstract

Abstract. For some forty years the eye‐tracking technology has facilitated the study of eye movement patterns for sighted people during reading and other visual activities. Today – a newly developed automatic finger tracking system makes it possible to reconstruct blind people’s tactile reading in real time and to automatically analyze finger movements during Braille text reading and tactile picture recognition. In this case study, the very first automatic finger tracking system is presented together with results indicating how Braille readers can increase awareness of their own reading styles. This opens up for future Braille education to become more evidence‐based and, at the same time, for a new research field: contrastive studies of language in its auditory, visual and tactile manifestations.