Passage II

Touching the Sky

The following paragraphs may or may not be in the most logical order. Each paragraph is numbered in brackets, and question 29 will ask you to choose where Paragraph 4 should most logically be placed.

[1]

The summer, before her senior year at Boston University, Noreen Grice worked as an intern at Boston's Museum of Science. While presenting a planetarium show to students from the nearby Perkins School for the Blind, it became apparent that the planetarium show relied heavily on visual information and that no aids were available to enhance the planetarium experience for people who were visually impaired. (18)

[2]

Several years later, after completing her master's degree in astronomy. Grice began to experiment with ways of creating "tactile illustrations" that could be read by touch. Initially, she produced a book of simple but effective raised astronomical diagrams entitled Touch the Stars, published in 1999.

[3]

Touch the Stars attracted the attention of an astronomy professor at DePaul University. He suggested that Grice produce a book of more sophisticated tactile illustrations based on images beamed back to Earth from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

[4]

Astronomy students, at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind field-tested the illustrations and offered suggestions for improvement. When Grice and the students were finally satisfied, the illustrations were stamped onto metal plates, which were then used to mass-produce molded plastic pages.

[5]

Grice went to work, putting in long hours at her kitchen table to create prototype illustrations. She traced images—of planets, stars, and galaxies onto notebook-sized plastic sheets, then used various tools to create raised shapes that marked the outlines of celestial objects. Grice also inscribed raised lines and bumps to convey color and other relevant information. For example, solid lines represented the color blue, dotted lines signified rings, and wavy lines indicate gas current. (26)

[6]

The new book was called Touch the Universe. After its publication in 2002, one woman acquired a copy for her ten-year-old son, who is visually impaired and wants to be an astronaut. Thanks in part to Grice, the boys' access to space may lie right at his doorstep.