Tag: blind

A Tool to Generate Tactile Street Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Speaking of tools for generating maps for the blind and visually impaired (previously), there’s also TMAP (Tactile Maps Automated Production) from Lighthouse’s MAD Lab.

TMAP is a screen reader-friendly tool for creating tactile street maps. Raised lines and textures represent roads, pedestrian paths, and railways. Maps range from a few blocks to a few miles wide.

Map creation is automated; you do not have to design and label maps. Simply enter an address, intersection or landmark into the search bar. Then choose settings for paper size and map scale, and which features to include on the map.

The maps can be ordered from Lighthouse’s store or printed on an embosser or tactile printer (as opposed to a 3D printer). Thanks to Fred DeJarlais for the tip.

3D Printed Tactile Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Touch Mapper is an open source project (GitHub) for generating 3D printed tactile maps for the visually impaired. The maps use OpenStreetMap data and produce a file that can be printed on almost any 3D printer, or ordered for a fee. The project started nearly a decade ago but I only stumbled across it today.

Previously: 3D Printed Maps for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Middle-earth in Braille

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A photograph of a braille/tactile map of Middle-earthAmong the tactile and braille maps sold by Adaptations, the store run by San Francisco-based LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, is this bundle of braille/tactile maps of Middle-earth. “The maps have raised lines, textures, and braille. There are 7 maps of Middle Earth, each focusing on different features (regions, settlements, mountains, forests, rivers and bodies of water). There are also two detailed maps: the Shire and Mordor.”

Australian Braille Globe Being Digitized

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A rare Braille globe held by the Queensland State Library is being digitized so as to create a 3D-printed replica. The globe, invented by Richard Frank Tunley in the 1950s, is one of the last copies still in existence and is in poor physical shape—problematic for something designed to be touched. That’s where the replica comes in. It’s funded by the library foundation’s crowdfunding initiative, which will also help fund the original globe’s restoration. ABC News, Sydney Morning Herald. Media release. [ANZMapS]

Tactile Maps, Modern and Historical

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Two items on maps for the blind and visually impaired—a subject I find terribly interesting:

Greg Miller of National Geographic’s All Over the Map reports on a new tactile atlas of Switzerland, which “is printed with special ink that expands when heated to create tiny bumps and ridges on the page.” I can’t find a direct link to said atlas, but Greg interviews Esri cartographer Anna Vetter, who led the project.

Tactile maps have been around for a long time: Atlas Obscura looks at tactile maps—and even a tactile globe!—dating back to the early 1800s. Many of these maps are in the archives of the Perkins School for the Blind. The Perkins School has a Flickr album of these maps.

The Princeton Braillists

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

princeton-braillists
Princeton Braillists’ map of Alaska: master master tooled in metal foil (left); thermoform copy made from metal master (right).

The Princeton Braillists publish tactile maps and atlases for a blind readership. Several books of maps are available: world and regional atlases, maps of U.S. states, and others.

Maps and drawings are created by hand in an aluminum foil sheet. The metal is embossed with a variety of tools to produce raised lines and areas of varying height, texture and width. The maps are labelled with key letters that are identified on the pages preceding each map. The master drawing is duplicated by the Thermoform process to make clear, sharp copies. The 11×11½-inch plastic sheets are bound into volumes with cardboard covers and spiral plastic binders.

[cartogeek]

A 19th-Century Tactile Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

L. R. Klemm, Relief Practice Map: Roman Empire (New York, 1894), 29 × 32 cm. Scale 1:20,000,000. The Library of Virginia.

L. R. Klemm’s Relief Practice Map: Roman Empire (above) is an example of the printed tactile maps used to teach sighted and blind students alike during the nineteenth century. [via]

Most of the maps for blind and visually impaired users I’ve encountered to date are of modern provenance. Previously on The Map Room: Joshua Miele’s Tactile Maps; A View of Prague for the Blind; Virtual 3D Maps for the Blind; Maps for the Visually Impaired; Maps and Directions for the Blind; Online Maps for the Visually Impaired.