Tactile maps · 3D printed
Maps you read with your hands
Mountains rise under your fingers. Coastlines have an edge you can follow. Every border is a ridge you can trace from one end to the other. Made for blind and low-vision readers, and rebuilt from what one of them found in it.
The map in numbers
- 40 × 32 cm
- Full map, four tiles that lock together
- 4
- Height levels a fingertip can tell apart
- 27
- Countries labelled in braille
- 2
- Braille alphabets: English and Serbian
Why it exists
It began as a present for a friend
A friend of mine is blind. The maps he could get were either flat printed sheets that tell your fingers almost nothing, or museum pieces you cannot take home. So I wrote code that turns real elevation and border data into something a hand can read, and printed him one.
He cried when he understood what he was holding. He has spent a great deal of time with it since.
What I did not expect was which part held him. Not the map: the braille. He had wanted to learn to read it for years and had never had the chance to sit down with someone and start. So now we work on it together and I teach him, letter by letter. It is hard going. He puts real effort into it, and he is getting somewhere.
This is my account of it, in my words rather than his.
The second version
What his hands found
Working through the map with him turned up two things I had got wrong, and neither was visible on my screen.
- The country numbers were not braille I had put raised Arabic digits on the map. Perfectly legible to me, useless to him: every number had to be read out loud by somebody else before the legend card was any use at all.
- The dots were too small and too sharp I had used standard braille dimensions and spacing, and the model looked right. Printed, the dots came out as points rather than domes. A fingertip caught the tip and little else, so neighbouring dots blurred together – which makes learning braille harder than it already is.
Both are fixed in the geometry the current files generate:
- Country labels are braille numbers. Each one carries an anchor ridge on its left: a single cell out on open ground has no line, no neighbours and no baseline, so the ridge gives the reading finger a left edge and marks the top and bottom rows.
- Every dot is a smooth dome, 1.6 mm across and 0.8 mm high, on Marburg Medium spacing – 2.5 mm between dots, 6 mm between cells. Rounded, never pointed.
- The capital-city bumps are gone. They were easy to mistake for a braille dot under a fingertip, and they took up the clear space a label needs around it.
Every photograph on this page shows that first print. Every render shows the files as they stand now. The two are not the same object, and the difference is the point: this map is checked by a blind reader's hands and rebuilt from what they find.
The design
What the hand actually feels
One decision shaped everything else: a border is a low ridge riding on top of the land, not a wall at a fixed height. An earlier version used tall walls, and they buried small lowland countries whole. Now a finger can follow a frontier and still feel the ground rise on either side of it.
Here is the current design, feature by feature.
| Feature | How it feels |
|---|---|
| Terrain | Four flat levels: sea, lowland, plateau, mountains – 0, 1, 2 and 3 mm |
| Borders | A ridge 1.2 mm above whatever it crosses, traceable end to end |
| Seas | Ribbed waves 2 mm high, unmistakable against flat land |
| Country labels | Braille numbers, keyed to a separate braille legend card |
| Orientation | An anchor ridge left of every label marks its left edge and its rows |
| Assembly | Four 20 × 16 cm tiles, dovetailed: they drop in from above and cannot slide apart |
Elsewhere
Where this has been read
I posted the map, and later the update, on Reddit. If you would rather have the unedited version with the comments attached, it is there.
Commissions
What you can order
- A region or a country
- Any part of the world, at the scale that suits the reader: a continent to learn, or one country in detail.
- A city or a route
- A neighbourhood, a campus, the walk from home to school – the places someone needs to hold in their head.
- A classroom set
- Several copies of the same map, so a whole group can work at once instead of passing one around.
- A museum piece
- A tactile panel for an exhibition, or a building plan for visitors, with braille labelling in your language.
Process
How it works
- You tell me the region Which area, who will read it, how many copies. Three lines in an email are enough to start.
- I send a price and a timeline A fixed price before any work begins. No hourly surprises.
- I generate and check the model The geometry is generated from real elevation and border data by code I wrote, then verified to be a single watertight solid – the check a print shop cannot do for you.
- You get the map Printed and shipped, or the print-ready files if you have your own printer.
Price
What it costs
The ready-made set
Europe, the Middle East and North Africa: the four-tile map, the braille legend and the braille alphabet card, printed and shipped. Available in English or Serbian braille. Shipping quoted separately.
A map made for you
A new region, a city, a classroom set or a museum piece. The price depends on the area, the level of detail and the number of copies. Tell me what you need and a fixed figure comes back, with a timeline.
For institutions
Schools, museums and public bodies
Buying from an individual maker is usually the awkward part. It does not have to be.
Work is invoiced from a registered business, with the documents your finance office expects. For multiple copies you approve one printed piece, in your hands, before the rest are made. Braille labelling is generated per language: Serbian Gajica braille, including Č Ć Dž Đ Lj Nj Š Ž, is already built and in use.
Planning something for an exhibition or a school year? Write early – the time goes into design, not into printing.
Open source
The files are free
The map that started this is open source under the MIT licence, together with the code that generates it. If you have a 3D printer: print it, adapt it, give it away. No permission needed, nothing to pay.
Paid work is the part you cannot download – a region that does not exist yet, your language, your building, your classroom, printed and checked by someone who answers for it.
Who makes this
One person, and the friend it was made for
I am Gleb, a software engineer. I do not sculpt these maps by hand – I write the code that generates them from real elevation and border data, which is why a new region is a matter of days rather than months, and why every file can be checked for printability before it reaches a printer.
The other half of the work happens at a table with my friend, and it is the half that decides what gets built. You will deal with me directly, from the first email to the parcel.
Which part of the world should someone be able to feel?
Send the region, who will read it and how many copies. You get a price and a timeline back, usually within two days.