The role pictures and graphics can play in making Telidon, a Canadian home information retrieval videotex service, a viable communications medium is discussed. This report concentrates on contributions of theories of perception and cognition to knowledge of how different kinds of visual images can most effectively be used on Telidon. The issues of whether some ideas are best translated into images while others are more suited to words and how pictures and words might complement each other in communication information on videotex are first addressed. The need for pictorial realism in portraying objects in videotex displays is then examined. Because studies on how people identify objects in pictures suggest that, in some cases, line-drawings, cartoons, and caricatures can more effectively convey information than realistic photographs, the implications of these findings for how pictures of objects are stored in the data base are explained. Finally, the report examines how abstract images and schemas can facilitate learning and problem-solving on videotex, especially how dynamic images can be used on Telidon. Also included are a short introduction to picture perception psychology by Adam Gopnik, and a four-page supplementary bibliography. (LMM)