In accordance with the South African
Constitution, discrimination on the grounds of
disability is prohibited and children’s right to
education is enshrined. However, only a small
percentage of text published in South Africa is
made available in accessible formats, including
tactile material for visually impaired readers.
This leads to a severe lack of contextually
relevant material in local languages for the
thousands of visually impaired children
enrolled in South African schools.
South Africa has 12 official languages,
Afrikaans being one of them. It is a younger
language, with roots in resistance against
colonial oppression that evolved out of
indigenous and colonial languages. It was
formed out of necessity for communication
amongst displaced and oppressed people.
Afrikaans is rich in ideophonic interpretations.

Ideophones are words that derive their
meaning and interpretation from the
sounds that they reference or senses that
they trigger. Similarly, phonosemantics
refers to the onomatopoeic meaning and
interpretation of a word’s sound and what it
symbolises. We see examples of this in the
Afrikaans naming of indigenous flora and
fauna (e.g. in Afrikaans, the Grey Turaco bird
is called a Kwêhvoël, named after its warning
sound “Kuh-wê”.) This naming convention
engages the imagination by encouraging a
creative interpretation of the concept.

This project explores phonosemantics
in a tactile format for visually impaired
South African children. The project team
has a background in narrative illustration,
tactile picture books and education. Tactile
interpretations are created in collaboration
with visually impaired readers and adaptations
form a multi-sensory interactive installation.