Tactile copies of graphical information have historically been used to provide access by blind people to graphics when word descriptions were inadequate. Until fairly recently, tactile graphics were laboriously created by hand. Consequently there was very little tactile information available to blind people. A tactile graphics overview was published several years ago by John Gardner describing both hand-creation and more modern methods for creating tactile graphics. The recent introduction of the Tiger Tactile Graphics Embosser, promise a vast improvement in access to tactile graphics.
Tiger can print tactile copies of essentially anything that appears on a computer screen.
Tactile images from computers can also be made using capsule papers as described in the overview linked above. Unfortunately, most abstract graphic information that is currently available in electronic form, including most World Wide Web graphics, are not really useful if just printed in tactile form. Images of typical text are not readable, and much fine detail is tactually unrecognizable. Typical figures contain a wealth of detail that is far less comprehensible to the fingers than to the eyes. A technique pioneered by Dr. Donald Parkes.