Frequently, teachers invest a great deal of time in promoting the comprehension of verbal texts by students as a fundamental part of the teaching-learning process, and relegate the accompanying images to a second place. This attitude is associated to a traditional conception of reading comprehension, in spite of the fact that images occupy a salient place in current information sources and that in many occasions they carry information different to the verbal texts. This article presents the basic rationale over which studies regarding visual literacy were initiated and analyzes the impact of a proposal for visual literacy in reading comprehension. Finally, it describes the technical aspects that were taken into account in the elaboration of a hypermedia environment designed specifically with the purpose of favoring the reading of images in elementary school students.