A Magazine Commentary on Accessible Porn: Literally, a “Touchy” Subject

You probably saw this coming around, didn’t you? Accessible web sites, movies, videos, and now, pornography!

We here at Even Grounds strongly believe in making entertainment accessible, and yes, this includes forms of entertainment that may be a bit “excitingly erotic”, if we may say so.

It’s true. There are people who are actually making products that aim to make porn accessible to the blind, letting them join the bawdy bandwagon so to speak. One of the most popular of these is the tactile images of nude men and women which blind people can touch.

There’s been a lot of discussion made over this, especially on the Internet. But before you go “What?” or while you’re probably giggling in your seat, let us look at these products in the perspective of its main target market. After all, these products were made with the blind in mind.

The Blind’s Reaction to Accessible Tactile Porn

Wondering and giggling aside, let us try to take a scientific (I can’t believe I was able to include that adjective in this post) look at how a blind person would react to accessible tactile pornography.

We all know that blind and sighted people have different perspectives when it comes to pictures. When sighted people look at a picture, they are able to associate the picture with the real object. In this case, colors, hue, and shade are major factors. So it is therefore easy for sighted people to get that “oh so exciting” sensation when looking at risque images.

On the other hand, when blind people touch a tactile representation of an image, they can generally understand the shape and feel of the image. They would also be able to know how to picture the image.

But let us put it this way: Blind people are normally not exposed to pictures. There may be cases where a simple picture to a sighted person would be a very complex one to blind individuals. So in terms of tactile pornography, when blind people do understand a tactile image, it really isn’t that sensation of excitement that they feel. Rather, it’s more of a feeling of “Oh, now I understand what these look like in a picture”.

An Actual Example of Accessible Tactile Porn

A few years ago, artist Lisa Murphy has published a book called Tactile Mind. The book features handmade images of naked men and women that were made 3-D using plastic thermoform. Text descriptions in Grade 1 Braille are also included along with the images.

Toronto Sun’s news article about Tactile Mind was the main inspiration for this post. Read the full article here. You can also visit the product’s web site at TactileMindBook.com.

If you are blind, what does a tactile porn book actually mean to you? Or if you are sighted, what in your opinion would be the implications of the book? Please tell us in the comment form below.