Tactile Playgrounds

ABOUT

Vision plays a key role in understanding the spatial structure of an environment and as such, the visually impaired (VI) face difficulties in obtaining concepts related to spatial relationships. This project focuses on VI children and highlights the importance of multisensory engagement to help them flexibly manipulate mental representations to memorise spatial relations between objects. By leveraging technology, the project’s aim is to effectively communicate and aid VI children in navigating by creating tactile playgrounds for interactive exploration and spatial memorisation through touch and play, eventually creating a series of assistive navigational tools. Moving away from existing tactile maps, these explorations could potentially create more opportunities for an alternative design approach—one that extends beyond the conventional areas of design and embraces tangible, interactive elements.