When communicating with people with visual impairments or their close relatives, I often had to hear that they love their city very much, but cannot see its beauty and feel it like everyone else, but dream about it very much. The idea that we could somehow help these people became the main motivation for implementing this innovative project.
How to make the city's cultural and historical objects more accessible to the blind?
Traditional city sculptures or architectural monuments give little to a blind person or a person with visual impairments. In the modern world, technologies are developing that allow everyone to learn something new, regardless of their health condition, including whether a person has the ability to see the world around them with their own eyes. There are many ways to make the city's cultural and historical objects more interesting for people with poor vision. These can be audio guides or audio descriptions. But these can also be more innovative approaches, for example, tactile exhibitions and even 3D printing.
The ability to touch the city's cultural and historical objects is not a new concept. There are many museums around the world that use 3D printing. One of the key advantages of this new technology is that it can give people with visual impairments the opportunity to "look" at the city's cultural and historical objects in a new way.
The "City by Touch" project is aimed at allowing people with visual impairments to "see" the beauty of architecture and sculptures of Mukachevo city through touch.
The idea of installing reduced tactile models (copies) of cultural and historical objects of Mukachevo city belongs to representatives of the Public Organization "Barrier-Free Transcarpathia" – an initiative public organization that implements and promotes barrier-free access, inclusion and protects the rights and interests of low-mobility population groups. The social project initiated by this public organization called "Sunday Bag" - a project to help socially vulnerable categories of the population, as well as other projects: "Barrier-Free Salon", "Barrier-Free Inspector" has gained great popularity not only in the Transcarpathian region, but also throughout Ukraine. You can learn more about the activities of the Public Organization "Barrier-Free Transcarpathia" on their Facebook page at the link (1) Facebook
A tactile model is a reduced copy of an architectural object or sculpture that is installed next to the original. Thanks to the miniature, people with visual impairments will be able to get acquainted with the city's architecture and feel the features of the building through touch.
Tactile models have an appropriate location that will be convenient for blind people and organically fit into the city space.
Within the framework of the project, it is planned to manufacture and install reduced tactile models of the following architectural and sculptural objects of Mukachevo: 1) City Hall; 2) "Palanok" Castle; 3) Art School named after Mihaly Munkácsy; 4) Sculpture of Cyril and Methodius; 5) Sculpture of Saint Martin.
