Robotic Braille and Spatialmaps: Combining Tactile and Visual Narratives

Vision and tactility inform our cognition and perception of objects and environments. Yet there exist differentiations as to how perception is processed and formed, depending on unique and personal abilities for sensory cues. For people with low vision or blindness, tactile information processing posits a key approach to engage with and understand spaces, activities and interactions. This competence with tactility provides a rich context for current digital cultural practices that are predominantly informed by the visual, towards informed and complex materiality and space. The empirical research discussed here explores an understanding of tactility through transfers of images and information, towards surface patterns and textures, and the integration of braille text. In support of tactile literacy for reading and assessing images and letters, the research develops a surface archive of tactile patterns. Scrip-ting code is explored for design variability in terms of points, grids and line confi gurations and a six-axis ABB robot equipped with different routing tools for milling timber. This surface archive is further extended towards a prototype series of 'hyper-artefacts'-mul-ti-functional furniture objects that integrate different sets of visual or pictorial information that can be 'decoded' by sight, and tac-tile information to be deciphered by braille experienced readers. By adopting a practice of Universal Design for equitable, simple and inclusive use and by combining tactile and visual narratives for diverse audiences, the research thus contributes to increasing our awareness, knowledge and understanding of other people's conditions, thus supporting positive changes in attitudes and behaviour , towards more inclusive environments.