In a government classroom in Tamil Nadu, a young girl sits at her desk, her head bent in concentration. Her fingers move slowly across a raised map placed in front of her, tracing its curved lines, edges and borders.
She has heard teachers describe Tamil Nadu before. Now, its shape is taking form beneath her fingertips. She can follow the outline of the state and trace the curve of its coastline with her own hands.
For visually impaired children like her, a moment like this can mark the difference between memorising a description and understanding what it means. A map becomes something they can explore. A fruit has a shape they can recognise. A science diagram becomes something their fingers can follow and remember.
Across Tamil Nadu, tactile learning materials are bringing this experience into government schools for visually impaired students. Raised maps, models of fruits, science diagrams and tactile Braille books are helping children understand concepts that have long depended heavily on verbal descriptions, repetition and memory.
This raised map of India is designed for visually impaired students to explore by touch.]
Behind these materials is Tactile Braille India, a Coimbatore-based venture founded by Prabhu. It has entered into an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government to provide tactile learning materials to government schools for visually impaired students.
So far, the materials have reached 10 government schools across 10 districts in Tamil Nadu, benefiting around 354 students.
The work began with a question that stayed with Prabhu: How could concepts designed to be understood visually be made accessible through touch?
The question that made Prabhu look beyond words
Prabhu came to this work from a background far removed from education. Born into a farming family, he grew up around the land, hard work and limited resources.
After completing his BCom degree, he began working with digital and visual content. His work included 2D and 3D graphics, HTML, website design and the development of e-learning platforms.
Prabhu holds a raised map of India alongside students at a Tactile Braille India display.
That experience taught him to think about how information could be communicated visually and digitally. It would later become relevant to a very different challenge: translating visual concepts into forms that visually impaired students could understand through touch.
It was during this phase of his life that he first encountered Braille and began thinking about its possibilities and limitations.
“I realised that visually impaired students were learning only words and numbers,” Prabhu recalls. “They could read text, but they had no way to understand shapes, maps or diagrams. Geography, science, even simple objects, everything was abstract.”
The realisation stayed with him. If sighted children could look at a map, diagram or shape and build an understanding of it, Prabhu wondered how the same concepts could be made accessible to children who learnt through touch.
In 2011, he began studying tactile education systems used in India and Europe. He learnt how raised lines could represent visual information, how textures could explain geography and biology, and how everyday objects could be translated into tactile form.
A tactile learning book combines Braille, numbers, alphabets and familiar shapes.
In 2017, he began working with Braille-based learning materials using conventional Braille methods.
Then, in 2023, he expanded this work into tactile learning and started the venture under the name Tactile Braille India. His focus grew to include tactile maps, diagrams, models and other learning materials that allow visually impaired students to understand concepts through touch.
Over the years, Prabhu imported specialised machines, experimented with materials and worked on tactile Braille books, raised maps, fruit models and science diagrams.
“Braille teaches words. But tactile graphics teach the world,” he says.
The cost of putting a map beneath a child’s fingers
Creating these materials brought another challenge: cost.
Prabhu says even a blank Braille book can cost around Rs 3,000, while the machines used for tactile printing are expensive imports. For schools with limited resources, that can make specialised learning material difficult to access.
“I didn’t want cost to become another barrier,” Prabhu explains. “If these materials were too expensive, schools would never be able to use them.”
Tactile Braille India’s learning book uses raised lines and Braille to explain space.
He began importing specialised paper himself, handling printing in-house and absorbing much of the production expense. Today, through Tactile Braille India, he supplies tactile Braille books containing maps and science diagrams, along with learning models, to the Tamil Nadu government at a reduced cost.
“My time, my effort, everything I do is so that blind children can learn independently, without depending on anyone,” he says. “For me, this was never about business. If blind children can learn on their own, that itself is happiness.”
Prabhu also points to a larger gap that drives his work.
“Only about 25–30 percent of visually impaired students in India receive meaningful access to education,” he says. “I want that number to grow.”
A tactile learning page uses raised outlines to explain parts of plants and their growth.
The work has travelled beyond Tamil Nadu too.
Prabhu has supplied tactile model books and learning materials through organisations working with visually impaired students in around 11 other states, including Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Maharashtra.
Through these networks, the materials have reached approximately 1,250 students outside Tamil Nadu.
In his home state, the MoU with the Tamil Nadu government has brought the materials into government schools for visually impaired students. According to Prabhu, tactile learning tools are also being integrated into the official syllabus, giving students another way to engage with subjects that rely heavily on visual concepts.
A tactile learning page uses raised outlines and Braille to explain the human body.
“When I think about how my work is helping blind children understand the world,” he says, “it gives me real happiness.”
What changed inside a Pudukkottai classroom
The difference becomes easier to understand inside the Government Middle School for the Visually Impaired in Pudukkottai district.
Here, headmaster Vadivelan has watched students encounter concepts through tactile books and models.
“Earlier, our students learnt only alphabets, numbers and basic words,” he says.
“They had no idea what a fruit looked like, what the map of India felt like, or what a kidney or heart was. These were things they simply could not imagine.”
A tactile science page explains the human kidney using raised outlines and Braille labels.
Science and geography were particularly difficult. Teachers relied heavily on verbal explanations, describing shapes, borders, organs and other concepts while students tried to build a mental picture of something they could not physically explore.
Tactile materials have given them another way in.
“For the first time, students can explore concepts on their own. They can feel shapes, follow outlines and understand spatial relationships. The government supporting this initiative through the syllabus has given our children an opportunity they never had before,” Vadivelan says.
A student explores a tactile learning book with raised drawings, Braille and labels.
Teachers say the students are more engaged, ask more questions and retain concepts better. Lessons that once felt distant are becoming easier to explore and revisit.
For two students in the school, that change can be understood through something as simple as a map and an apple.
The day Vignesh could feel Tamil Nadu’s coastline
For Vignesh, a Class 8 student, geography was once one of the most confusing subjects in school.
His teachers spoke about borders, coastlines and neighbouring states. He could listen to the descriptions and remember the words, but the shapes behind those words remained abstract.
That changed the day a tactile map was placed on his desk.
Vignesh ran his fingers over its raised surface, paused and retraced the lines. His teacher told him, “This is Tamil Nadu.”
For the first time, he could feel the outline of his own state. His fingertips followed the curve of the coastline and the edges where one region met another.
“Earlier, I could only imagine what the teacher described. Now I can understand it myself. When I touched the map, I felt where Tamil Nadu begins and ends. It stayed in my mind,” says Vignesh.
Vignesh reads a Braille book at the Government Middle School for the Visually Impaired.
His teachers noticed a change after that lesson.
Vignesh began asking more questions in class. During free periods, he returned to the tactile map, tracing it again and again and growing more confident with every pass of his fingers.
Geography, once a subject he feared, had become something he could grasp, quite literally.
When Harini recognised an apple without guessing
For Harini, a Class 7 student, the challenge lay closer to everyday life.
She had heard descriptions of fruits all her life: round, smooth, long and soft. She knew their names, but those words had not given her a clear understanding of their shapes.
“I knew the names,” she says, “but I didn’t know their shape.”
Then tactile diagrams of fruits were introduced in her classroom.
Using her fingertips, Harini traced the raised outline of a mango and then an apple. She followed their curves and edges, feeling the differences between their shapes.
Harini uses a tactile Braille book designed to help students understand shapes through touch.
Later, her teacher placed a real apple in her hand.
The shape felt familiar. It matched what her fingers had already explored on the page.
“It felt exactly like what I studied,” she says, her voice bright. “I was not guessing anymore. I knew.”
That moment gave her greater confidence in class and in her own understanding. Her teachers say Harini now participates more actively, particularly during lessons involving objects and diagrams.
“For the first time,” she says, “I feel like I understand the world a little better.”
‘They feel capable’
For visually impaired students, tactile learning creates space for a different kind of classroom experience.
Students can return to a map, retrace a diagram or explore a model at their own pace. They can build an understanding of a shape through their own hands and revisit it whenever they need to.
Harini traces a raised diagram in a tactile Braille book during a classroom learning session.
That independence matters to the educators working with them.
“When children realise they can understand things on their own, it changes how they see themselves,” a teacher notes. “They feel capable.”
For Prabhu, that growing confidence is also what gives years of experimentation, designing and production their meaning.
“When I see children confidently tracing maps or explaining shapes, I feel my work has meaning,” he says. “They are no longer limited by what they cannot see. All my effort is for the independence of visually impaired students.”
For Vignesh, a coastline now has a curve he can follow. For Harini, the shape of an apple is something she can recognise instead of guessing.
Across the classrooms these materials have reached, raised lines, maps, diagrams and models are giving students another way to encounter the world around them, one they can explore with their own hands and understand for themselves.
