Last week I attended a workshop at the Springfield Science Museum on making astronomy accessible to visually impaired participants. I went partly out of genuine curiosity — it’s a topic I hadn’t thought much about — and partly as a representative of NBAS, because this kind of community networking is part of what we’re trying to do as a club.

Author Noreen Grice and Organizer Jenny Powers

Engaging with "Touch the Stars"

Learning about accessibility

I’m glad I went.

Touch the Stars

The workshop was led by Noreen Grice, author of Touch the Stars as well as several other accessible astronomy books all presented on the “You Can Do Astronomy " website. What she has produced is remarkable: a book that conveys astronomy to visually impaired readers not just through Braille text, but through nearly 20 raised images — tactile illustrations of solar system objects, eclipses, and deep-sky objects that a reader can actually feel.

Copies of the book were available at the workshop, and holding one brought home something I hadn’t fully appreciated before: how much of our communication about astronomy is purely visual. We talk about the rings of Saturn, the tendrils of a nebula, the pitted surface of the Moon — and all of it assumes the listener can picture what we mean. Noreen’s work asks what it looks like to build that understanding through touch instead, and the answer is genuinely impressive.

Examples of Raised Relief Diagrams in "Touch the Stars"

Phases of the Moon

Jupiter and the Great Red Spot

Saturn and rings to scale

the stars of Orion

Lyra and the Ring Nebula

The structure of a Spiral Galaxy

Accessibility in Action: The Springfield Science Museum

What was also impressive was that just outside of the room where the workshop was held at the Springfield Science Museum, were exhibits on the Moon and meteorites that directly put this into action:

Tactile Exhibits at the Museum

Moon globe

Description of the Tycho crater

What’s important to notice here is that it’s not an “either/or” situation: making astronomy accessible can be enriching for a broad audience; engaging several senses in ways that bring very distant objects “closer” to us.

What We Learned

Beyond the book itself, the workshop covered practical guidelines for making presentations and public events more accessible to visually impaired attendees — how to describe what’s in a telescope eyepiece, how to approach and engage with someone who can’t see the object you’re pointing at, how to think about the full experience of an event rather than just its visual centerpiece.

That last part stuck with me most. It’s less about equipment or materials and more about awareness — knowing how to have a conversation that includes everyone at the eyepiece, not just those who can see through it.

What NBAS Is Taking Home

I ordered a copy of Touch the Stars at the workshop, and I’ll be donating it to the North Adams Public Library so it’s available to the whole community — not just people who attend our events.

For NBAS specifically: if we know in advance that a visually impaired person will be attending one of our star parties or public events, we can have the book on hand as a resource. But more practically, having attended this workshop, I now feel better prepared to engage thoughtfully with a visually impaired attendee when the moment comes — without waiting for special arrangements. This was another important focus of the presentation: becoming aware of how to make the experience engaging, and also how to tailor our own presentations to be more descriptive and contextual without presuming that everyone can “see” the materials.

Astronomy belongs to everyone. That’s something we say on our outreach page, and it’s worth making sure our events actually reflect it.