An excellent view for everybody: VRVis has designed a tactile panorama relief for the Graz Museum Schlossberg, providing views of the city. The project was now awarded this year's Universal Design Award (UD Award) in the categories Gold, Expert and Consumer. The UD Award recognizes projects that offer solutions for an accessible, barrier-free society that are intuitive and easy to use. The tactile panoramic relief relies on visual computing and is not a simple display of the city map. It translates the view from the Schlossberg in Graz into a tactile experience by incorporating the spatial proximity of the sights and the depth of perspective. Blind and visually impaired people can thus also get an accurate impression of the surroundings of the Graz Schlossberg Museum.
Improving acessibility through inclusive digitization
The panoramic relief was created by using VRVis' tactile modeling software, which was additionally enhanced for this unique use case. Andreas Reichinger is an expert for inclusive digitization at VRVis and applied terrain data, vegetation maps and 3D models of buildings for the relief. He combined these data in a special way to mimic the perception of the human eye and thus create a realistic depth impression of the surroundings of the Schlossberg in Graz. Interacting with the panoramic relief is intuitive and simple and interesting for visitors of all ages. VRVis has been researching accessible digitization for over 15 years, developing human-centered, inclusive solutions for museums across Europe.
Vienna, May 16 2023