Tactile SVG (Swell Paper)
Open BetaExport OpenStreetMap map data as a tactile map for blind and visually impaired users. Specially optimized SVG for printing on microcapsule paper (Swell Paper) with tactile textures, Braille labels, and simplified contours.
Key Features
About Tactile SVG Format
Tactile SVG is an ordinary vector SVG (the open W3C standard), but drawn by the rules of tactile graphics: black and white only, no halftones, with large textures distinguishable by touch. Such a file is printed not for the eyes but for the fingers: on microcapsule (swell) paper the black areas rise above the sheet after heating, and the map becomes a relief.
The export is needed where a blind or partially sighted person has to be given an idea of the terrain: teaching aids for geography, a scheme of the district around a school or a rehabilitation center, a route to a bus stop, inclusive city projects. An ordinary map cannot be brought into such a scenario — color is not read by fingers, and fine graphics blur into mush after heating.
In the file from OSM2CDR there are four layers with different tactile textures: roads as solid lines, buildings as cross hatching, water as diagonal hatching, green zones as dots. The names of streets and objects are converted into Braille (uncontracted, Latin and Cyrillic), and in the bottom right corner a tactile legend is assembled with Braille captions for every texture. The sheet is A4 in portrait orientation with margins and a border along the edge, a single .svg file that can be freely refined in Inkscape before printing.
What Program Opens Tactile SVG Files
The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with Tactile SVG (Swell Paper) (.svg) files exported from OSM2CDR:
Format specifications
- Open standard
- 2D only
- Lossless (no quality loss)
- Stores feature attributes
- Output: 1 file
- SVG with tactile-printing high-contrast styling. For embossing raised-line maps for visually impaired users on Braille printers.
Who Uses Tactile SVG Maps
How to Export Tactile SVG
How to Open After Export
- Inkscape (free) — open the .svg, check that the sheet is A4 and the scale is 100%, move apart overlapping labels if needed and remove unnecessary objects. Print without fit to page, otherwise the texture sizes will drift.
- An ordinary laser or inkjet printer plus microcapsule paper (Swell Paper, Zychem, Tactile Image Paper) — printing in black on such paper works as on ordinary paper.
- A heat processor — Zychem ZyFuse, Swell Form Machine or PIAF Tactile Image Maker: the sheet is run through the heating, the black areas swell up and become relief.
- A Braille embosser with a graphics mode (ViewPlus, for example) — an alternative route without swell paper: the SVG is printed through the embosser driver; check graphics support in the documentation for your model.
- A check before a print run — give a test sheet to a teacher of the blind or to a blind reader: an A4 sheet fits a block or a district, not a whole city; if you take too large an area, the textures and the Braille blur together under the fingers.
Popular maps in Tactile SVG
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