For visually impaired people it is difficult to digitally get graphical contents increasingly conveyed
through sight. The sense of touch can potentially bridge the gap, as it is crucial -in absence of vision
-for understanding abstract concepts and acquiring information about the surroundings. Examples
are learning at school and developing mental maps in orientation and mobility daily tasks. However,
available touch screens have limited or no tactile feedback at all. The potential and the market of
tactile displays are largely unexploited, although there is a clear demand from users: these devices
need to become more versatile, cheaper, portable and socially acceptable. This project has made
graphical contents accessible through touch by building and field-testing a Personal Assistive Device
for BLIND and visually impaired people (BlindPAD). BlindPAD puts veridical touch-based information
into the hands of users, exploiting and enhancing their residual sensory abilities. The BlindPAD has
explored several technologies, compared in terms of actuation force, resolution, safety, power
consumption and reliability.
By adopting a user-centred approach within an accessible and usable ecosystem, we have assessed,
with serious games, how the BlindPAD can help visually impaired people in two paramount use
cases: touch-based learning of symbolic content at school age; orientation and mobility skills indoor.
We have shown that our programmable tactile display increases, in persons with sensory deficits,
the spatial working memory, the mathematical abilities, the capacity to find one’s own position in
an unknown space and spatial knowledge in general, beyond current rehabilitation protocols.
BlindPAD will be a personal, portable and cheap solution to improve knowledge and independence,
thus increasing chances of employment, of social inclusion and, ultimately, of a better quality of life

https://www.blindpad.eu/

• Western Europe and North America

• People with disabilities
• Visually impaired

BlindPAD will be a personal, portable and cheap solution to improve knowledge and independence and can be replicated wherever it is needed.

Accessible education to handicapped individuals