What if You Could Touch a Sunset?

By Ted Tahquechi of Blind Travels 

Last year, Blind Travels partnered with Redline Contemporary Art center of Denver and The Andy Warhol Foundation for visual art to develop a process that takes photographs and extracts the luminosity values and textures, then creates a 3d printable tactile print. This is not only great for the blind and low vision community, but has also been well received by the colorblind community and those who are on the autism scale, for their touch and audio features. The project was launched at the National Federation of the Blind national convention last year to rave reviews. 

Disabled Art is now working with galleries, museums and even the VA. Their goal is to make art accessible to those who can’t see and to try to shift the mentality for accessible art to one that is considered in the creation of an exhibition rather than as an afterthought. Each piece has the traditionally framed photograph, the tactile (touchable) print, and a plaque with a braille label and tactile scannable QR code. Scanning the QR code gives an audio description of the original photo, then walks the viewer through the features of the tactile print. This gives the viewer all the context they need for what they are feeling, and delivers a true multi sensory experience.  

Find out more at https://www.disabledart.com/.