TY - ABST

T1 - When Helpers Guide Visually Impaired People by Touching, Taking, and Moving Their Hands

AU - Due, Brian Lystgaard

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Streeck describes how “Grasping is without doubt the raison d’être of the human hand […] grasping, more than any other primordial action of the human body, combines perception and action.” (Streeck, 2009, p. 40). In this presentation, I show how non-members of the “blind community”, with no prior experience with guiding people with visual impairment (PVI), achieves a grasp for guiding. I focus on how helpers guide visually impaired people towards and around objects by touching, grabbing, and moving their hands. There are official guidelines (e.g., EverydaySight, 2018) for how to achieve an embodied formation, positioning the body and using the arm and hand in a particular way, when establishing the grasp and starting to reach for objects and coordinate help. Perceiving where an object is when trying to grasp it can be complicated as an isolated bodily action. But being a non-member and co-operating with a PVI on achieving a workable grasp for object understanding is, as this presentation will show, embedded within repair sequences that requires substantial multimodal and multisensorial coordinating work. The presentation will show how establishing a mutual bodily positioning for perception (Goodwin, 2007) is necessary for achieving the “enclosing” of the others body part. The presentation shows video excerpts from data collected in Denmark and analyze the data using EM/CA.

AB - Streeck describes how “Grasping is without doubt the raison d’être of the human hand […] grasping, more than any other primordial action of the human body, combines perception and action.” (Streeck, 2009, p. 40). In this presentation, I show how non-members of the “blind community”, with no prior experience with guiding people with visual impairment (PVI), achieves a grasp for guiding. I focus on how helpers guide visually impaired people towards and around objects by touching, grabbing, and moving their hands. There are official guidelines (e.g., EverydaySight, 2018) for how to achieve an embodied formation, positioning the body and using the arm and hand in a particular way, when establishing the grasp and starting to reach for objects and coordinate help. Perceiving where an object is when trying to grasp it can be complicated as an isolated bodily action. But being a non-member and co-operating with a PVI on achieving a workable grasp for object understanding is, as this presentation will show, embedded within repair sequences that requires substantial multimodal and multisensorial coordinating work. The presentation will show how establishing a mutual bodily positioning for perception (Goodwin, 2007) is necessary for achieving the “enclosing” of the others body part. The presentation shows video excerpts from data collected in Denmark and analyze the data using EM/CA.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

Y2 - 22 September 2022 through 25 September 2022

ER -