A company is dedicated to leveraging 3D printing technology for the blind.
We wrote a few weeks ago about how individuals with sight impairment can use their sense of touch on 3D prints to understand shapes normally beyond the range of their fingers. It turns out librarylyna’s goal is to do this at scale. Their mission:
To host the largest collection of high quality educational 3D models to foster learning of the blind and visually impaired.
It’s an admirable mission and an excellent use of 3D technology for good. Check out founder Kevin Yang’s talk at the National Federation of the Blind’s R&D committee meeting:
It’s fascinating to see how 3D models differ slightly to aid in this process. In the image above you can see a “sulfur” atom, which includes the relevant shapes to convey the structure of that element.
Currently a small collection of relevant 3D models exists at librarylyna, but we expect this to grow simply because it is a good cause and people worldwide will donate 3D content. The 3D models are likely to be used worldwide as well. At the moment the library has three categories, biology, chemistry and mathematics, with a physics section to be added soon.
Via librarylyna
