Eclipse Experience through Tactile and Participatory Learning Models

Universal Design Activities

In cooperation with the Evansville Association for the Blind, Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial helped people with limited and no vision understand and participate in the excitement and learning opportunities of the eclipse through hands-on tactile and participatory learning models and methods ensuring that all visitors are welcomed and equally involved in an event they might not have experienced otherwise.

In the spirit of Universal Design, the activities and exhibits expanded the learning opportunities and the fun for all participants of the eclipse event.

In addition to conversation with staff of the Association for the Blind and Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, visitors listened with an app on their cell phones to a live-stream audio description of the eclipse. They also spoke on their cell phones to other people observing the eclipse. 

Visitors heard other visitors on-site describe and react to the decreasing and increasing size of the crescent shape of the sun as the moon passed in front of the sun. They heard visitors' reactions to the sight of the sun's corona visible around the sun. Visitors heard the spontaneous cheer from the crowd at the moment of totality when the moon completely covered the sun and the area went as dark as night. Visitors felt the temperature drop as the moon covered the sun's light.

Touchable table-top model of Sun, Moon and Earth.

NPS / Schier

Touchable table-top model that demonstrates a representation of the sun by a large beach ball and demonstrates the smaller size in comparison of the earth and its moon represented by stick pins positioned a distance from the beachball representing the sun.

Demonstration of location and relative distance been the Sun, Moon and Earth.

NPS / Schier

A demonstration of the location of the sun by a large beach ball on the lawn and the relative location of the earth and the moon over a distance and along a string that people can walk along to understand the position of all three and understand the moon's position in scale between the sun and the earth when the moon blocks the light of the sun during a total eclipse.

Hand-held model demonstrating the ascending and descending ecliptic plane

NPS / Schier

Also offered by the Association of the Blind staff was a hand-held model demonstrating the ascending and descending ecliptic plane, which is the imaginary plane containing the Earth’s orbit around the sun. The sun is represented in the model by a round wooden ball. The ascending plane is represented by a black half circle mounted at an upward slant around the ball representing the sun. The visitors reached the understanding that the desending plane extended below the sun at a similar slant as the asending plane.