3D Printing Enables Guide4Blind Experience
From: 3D Printing Industry - 05/23/2013
By: Rachel Park

Kreis Soest and Wirtschaft & Marketing Soest GmbH, two organizations in
central Germany, are promoting a trendsetting project that they are using
encourage new tourism experiences for visually impaired and blind visitors to
the area allowing them to touch and feel 3D models of local architecture.
Behind the scenes of this project, called Guide4Blind, 3D printing technology
from German industrial 3D printer manufacturer voxeljet, is playing a big
role in bringing it to fruition and making it work.

Guide4Blind, as the name would suggest, aims to guide blind people through
the inner city of Soest through suggested routes, while at the same time
providing them with very realistic impressions of noteworthy buildings along
the way. A navigation app provides a quick solution for route guidance
purposes. The city's main buildings become "visible" to the blind/visually
impaired by way of precise and scaled bronze models, located alongside the
respective landmarks.  Visually impaired visitors and tourists can touch and
feel the bronze models to obtain a detailed impression of the shapes and
surfaces of the buildings.

Read the entire article at:
http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/05/23/3d-printing-enables-guide4blind-experience-in-soest-germany/

Links:
New Ways for and with Tourism – Integrating Blind People 
http://www.isst.fraunhofer.de/en/business_units/gfaal/topic_projects/guide4blind/

Sightseeing Made Possible For Blind People
http://diyzilla.com/sightseeing-made-possible-for-blind-people/

Submitted by Arne Folkedal