What if you could touch a sunset? Our mission is to make travel photography and visual art accessible to those who cannot see it, by creating a 3D printed version of the image.
Tactile Photos allow viewers who are blind or visually impaired a way to experience and enjoy the beauty of photography and visual art on a deeper level – through touch. Each tactile print comes with a scannable tactile QR code that provides a detailed audio description of the image, guiding the viewer through its features and textures.
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Hi everyone, I run blindtravels.com, a travel resource for those who are in the blind and low vision community.
I wanted to tell you about the really cool project we have been working on.
In May of last year we began a partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual art to make landscape photography, specifically travel photography accessible for those who cannot see. They funded the development of our process which extracts the light and texture from an image and turns it into a 3d printable file, allowing blind people to experience photos for the first time. This led to another grant (from another organization) for travel, which resulted in a year's worth of travel across the US to capture images for our tactile art project.
We launched the work at the biggest gathering of Blind and low vision people in the US at the National Federation of the Blind convention in Florida. It has been a crazy year of innovation and travel for us!
We've been working for years to make travel accessible for those who can't see, now we have developed a way to make those travel memories accessible, I still can't get my head around the synergy with travel and accessible photography.
These prints also work well for those who are colorblind allowing them to experience color through touch. We have found that even fully sighted people gain a stronger connection to a piece of art when they can touch it.
If you are interested check out our work at www.tactilephotos.com
Now to get caught up on all those posts on TM!
Ted
That's a very admirable idea! Curious who bears the brunt of the cost, is it the user or the photographer wanting to share their work? I looked at your website but wasn't sure how it works? :)
Hi Sarah,
Thanks so much for your interest in tactile photography, it's always great to connect with folks who are curious about making visual art more accessible.
My wife, Carrie, is actually in the thick of rolling out a full business plan for our tactile art service as we speak. She’s the real mastermind behind the logistics while I keep up with my www.blindtravels.com website Right now, she is working on installations for the VA, several galleries, museums, and a few other exciting public venues. It's a lot of moving pieces, but incredibly rewarding.
As for your question about cost—great one. While creating the 3D files is mostly automated these days (thank goodness for tech!), the actual production process—printing the tactile pieces still takes a good bit of time and effort. So there’s definitely a cost involved, both in materials and in the hands-on time to get each piece just right.
She is in the early stages of marketing this to a larger audience, but I'll absolutely keep you posted as she starts offering the service to a broader clientele. The dream is to make tactile art accessible not just in galleries, but in homes, schools, and anywhere people want to experience photography in a new way.
Thanks again for the thoughtful question, and stay tuned, we’re just getting started!
Ted (and Fauna the guide dog, always close by!)
Thanks very much for the reply, Ted! Ah that makes sense, she's starting by marketing to larger audiences. That's really cool, anyway. And yes, I can imagine the 3-D printing is the most expensive part of it. Love the idea of bringing it eventually into homes, schools etc.
Looking forward to seeing your updates :)
Absolutely fantastic
Long overdue. Thanks.