About Us
Hungry Fingers is a one-man company specializing in designing and producing educational tools for young learners with a visual impairment. The tools are designed to help totally blind children understand difficult concepts based on visual experience, and on spatial relations needed for reading tactile graphics. The relation between objects and drawings, symmetry, rotation and perspective are just some of the problems which can be addressed with the help of the tools.
Special care is taken to ensure the highest possible quality of all products. All models, blocks, toys and puzzles are made of wood. Tactile illustrations are produced using “thermography” - a process developed and licenced by Tactile Vision Inc in Canada. Lines, textures, diagrams, maps and drawings produced with this method are clear, ”crisp”, and easy to read, even for less sensitive fingertips.
Unfortunately, feeling and recognizing different lines and textures is not enough for interpreting drawings, which rely so much on “sighted” conventions of representing 3-dimensional objects in 2-dimensional form. This is why Hungry Fingers gives so much attention to protecting young learners from the stress of not understanding the drawings. Whenever possible, models, or flat, intermediate shapes come with tactile illustrations, helping the child understand the connection between the two. Complex illustrations are introduced in stages, or accompanied by a chart with tactile representations of individual components.
The founder of Hungry Fingers is lucky to have worked and to be working with totally blind children who are the best judges of the suitability of each “invention”. It is also the children who provide the inspiration for discovering new ways to reach the intriguing world free from shortcuts and illusions of visual perception.
Bogusław Marek
© Copyright Hungry Fingers ™ 2011