Tactile maps and plans · 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 end to end. Custom 3D-printed maps and floor plans for blind and low-vision readers, corrected by a blind reader's hands.

Get a quote See how it works

From €150 for the ready-made set
English and Serbian braille
A price and a timeline within two days

Two hands resting on the assembled tactile map, seen from above. Four printed tiles form one map of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, with raised white borders, ribbed seas and small raised numbers inside the larger countries. — First print The set my friend received. Reading it with him is what produced the files this site now ships.

40 × 32 cm: The whole map, in four tiles that dovetail together
4 levels: Sea, lowland, plateau, mountains, 1 mm between steps
27 countries: Numbered on the map in braille, named on the legend card
2 alphabets: English and Serbian braille, letter beside braille cell

What you can order

Not only maps

Anything with edges and levels can be built to read under a fingertip. The world map is one output of that pipeline, not the limit of it: one of the first things people asked for after it was the floor plan of a church.

A plan is the same problem as a map. Walls are the lines a finger follows, doors are the gaps in them, and a room needs a name you can read without asking anyone.

A schematic, not a printed piece: plans are made to order. Walls become the ridge the hand traces, the doorway stays a gap, pillars stay where they are, and the room takes a braille number keyed to its legend card.

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 building, room by room: A church, a school, a station, a museum floor: what someone needs in their head before they can walk it on their own.
A classroom set: Several copies of the same piece, so a whole group can work at once instead of passing one around.

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.

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

Close render of a single braille number label on the map: a narrow upright anchor ridge on the left, then braille cells of rounded domed dots raised above the plate, with a border ridge running past. — One label up close: anchor ridge, then the cells. Domes, not points.

Render of the map around the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian: the seas are ribbed with parallel waves and the land rises in flat stepped plateaus towards the mountain ranges. — Four terrain steps, each exactly five printed layers tall, between two ribbed seas.

Render of the braille alphabet card: A to Z laid out in columns, each raised print letter followed by the same letter as a braille cell of domed dots. — The alphabet card carries every letter twice, in print and in braille, so a sighted teacher and a blind reader can work from the same card.

Render of the braille legend card: two columns of country names in braille, with a ribbed sea sample, a border sample and a braille number key along the bottom edge. — The legend card turns each number on the map into a country name.

Read by hand, then rebuilt

What his hands found

Two defects, neither of them visible on my screen. Both were found by reading the first print with him, and both are fixed in the files this site ships.

Close photograph of the first printed map: raised Arabic numerals such as 20, 19, 18, 30 and 16 sit inside the Central European and Balkan countries, next to ribbed seas and raised white borders. — First print Raised digits. He could feel that something was there, but not what it said.

Render of the same corner of the map from the current files: each country now carries a braille number label, a short upright anchor ridge followed by braille cells of domed dots, instead of a printed digit. — Now The same corner of the map today: an anchor ridge, then the number in braille.

Country numbers: First printRaised Arabic digits. Somebody else had to read every one of them out loud.; NowBraille numbers, keyed to the legend card, readable without asking anyone.
The dots: First printStandard dimensions printed as sharp points, so neighbouring dots blurred together.; NowSmooth domes, 1.6 mm across and 0.8 mm high, on Marburg Medium spacing.
Capital-city bumps: First printA raised bump per capital, easy to mistake for a braille dot under a fingertip.; NowGone, and the clear space a label needs around it came back with them.
Finding a label: First printA lone cell out on open ground, with no line and no left edge to start from.; NowAn anchor ridge before every label marks its left edge and its top and bottom rows.

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 is checked by hand, not by eye.

Process

How it works

You tell me the region Which area or building, 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 piece Printed and shipped, or the print-ready files if you have your own printer.

Price

What it costs

Ready-made set

From €150

Europe, the Middle East and North Africa
Four map tiles, legend card, alphabet card
English or Serbian braille
Printed and shipped, shipping quoted separately

Order the ready-made set

Made for you

Fixed quote

Any region, city, route or building
Scale and detail set for one reader
Braille in your language
Printed and shipped, or the print-ready files

Request a quote

Why it exists

It began as a present for a friend

A friend of mine is blind. The maps he could get were 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. 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, letter by letter. It is hard going, and he is getting somewhere.

This is my account of it, in my words rather than his.

A blind man in dark glasses leans over a table with both hands flat on two tiles of the tactile map, reading the raised borders with his fingers. — First print The map being read by the person it was made for.

For institutions

Schools, museums and public bodies

Buying from an individual maker is usually the awkward part. Work is invoiced from a registered business, with the documents your finance office expects, and for a run of 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.

All six printed pieces laid out together on a table: four map tiles, the braille legend card and the braille alphabet card with raised Serbian letters beside each cell. — First print One complete set: four map tiles, a legend card and an alphabet card.

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.

The project and its source code on GitHub

The sliced plates, ready to print, on MakerWorld

Render of the eight print-ready plates laid out in two rows: four map tiles, two braille legend cards and two braille alphabet cards. — Now Everything the build produces: eight print-ready plates, verified watertight.

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.

Gleb standing beside the assembled tactile map mounted on a wall, one hand resting against it.

Which part of the world should someone be able to feel?

Send the region or the building, who will read it and how many copies. You get a price and a timeline back, usually within two days.

Get a price for your region