The Tactile Universe: accessible astrophysics for vision impaired school children

STFC Public Engagement Nucleus Award to fund a national roll-out of the ICG's Tactile Universe public engagement project.

This award enabled a national roll-out of the Tactile Universe - a public engagement project to open up current topics in astrophysics research to young people with vision impairments. Prior to this award we had already created tactile images of galaxies to be used in educational sessions that we developed for school pupils aged 7 - 14. This award allowed us to expand the reach of the project across the country, ensuring its long-term legacy.

Five training workshops were held across the UK where we trained other public engagement professionals, educators and astronomers in how to use our resources and deliver our sessions. 20 kits containing all of our resources were created and distributed to attendees of these workshops. All of the instructions to make a kit (including 3D printing files for the tactile galaxy images and lesson plans) were also made freely available to download from our website - www.tactileuniverse.org for anyone to access. This means that there is now a network of trained practitioners across the UK who can deliver Tactile Universe sessions to visually impaired young people in their local area. Finally, recognising the inequality in access to STEM outreach in different parts of the country, we visited three schools in Cornwall ourselves and delivered sessions to classes that each included at least one visually impaired pupil. Further school visits in remote areas had to be cancelled due to COVID-19.