Visual Literacy Who, when, where, what, and How?

What is it? Who does it affect? Visual literacy is the ability to understand, deal with, and define what information is presented by pictures. Visual literacy – built on ideas that pictures can be “read” and that defined by a process of reading. The ability to view visual information with an understanding. A visually literate person can interpret how visual elements bring to the meaning into focus becoming a whole. The ability to interpret and use design elements of visual texts and to understand how they can be used for particular purposes in specific contexts.

Where to go? What are we looking for?

How If you really think about our surroundings, we use Visual Literacy everyday. Clocks – Traffic Lights – Road Signs Maps – give us a guide as where we are going, they include the “legend” that defines what these symbols mean.

Where would we be? Lost!!!!

Visual literacy is defined as the ability to understand connections composed of visual images as well as being able to use visual imagery to communicate to others. Students become visually literate by the practice of visual encoding and visual decoding (translating and understanding the meaning of visual imagery). (2008, Peter M. Leschak)