SENSE-braille: children’s multisensory experiences with auditory-haptic activities

This research investigated sensory preferences and experiences of individuals with visual impairment and blindness, when interacting with a novel multisensory device for braille learning. The device comprised an enlarged braille cell, in which interacting with each button elicited a sound, haptic vibration, or an auditory-haptic stimulus. Children, adolescents, and adults with blindness or visual impairment placed their fingertips on the device to perceive braille letters. Parents rated their children’s auditory and tactile hyper- and hyposensitivity. All participants reported enjoyment, competence, and confidence during device interaction. Participants with blindness favoured auditory-haptic and auditory modalities, while participants with visual impairment also liked the haptic-only modality. Children with blindness who scored high on hyposensitivity revealed higher hypersensitivity scores within the auditory and haptic modalities, while children with visual impairment showed cross-modal hyper- and hyposensitivity correlations between tactile and auditory modalities. Multisensory enrichment of braille learning, applications, and diagnoses are discussed to outline future research.