Braille Turkish Font & Stencil

One week ago, a blind lady asked me for a help to read a price tag at the market. Of course, I helped her, though, I thought to myself that I could make a little touch on this. By the way, there are no projects on accessibility for the people with disabilities. Accessible areas for people with disabilities are so limited that we only design everyday life for ourselves. Technological studies are not sold in cheap price that can be taken by every disabled person. As you understand, there is no equality in opportunity. In public areas, especially small sized enterprises are not sufficient to design their firms for disabled persons. As for the visually impaired, labels or directions are too difficult to write with Braille Alphabets as well as, they put an additional burden on production side.

There are lots of fonts that are developed for blind people. Recently, Kosuke Takahashi has designed a font named Braille Neue.

As a user experience designer, I thought maybe I could find a more sustainable solution. I did a project preliminary work without going into details of technology, it was as if DIY project. I have reviewed Takahashi's font in detail again, Of course, as it is not a Turkish script and also I want to add my own interpretation, I redesign it. I've experienced Braille alphabet for a day or two and have tried to learn it. I have tried to make empathy, though, it seems closing your eyes and trying to learn is really different than live your whole life in this way.

The standard size of Braille Turkish has been designed with reference to the Helvetica Neue 95 pt size for making easier to handle in labels and signages.

Braille Turkish uses the combination of both letters with Braille Alphabet and Turkish normal font.

I also designed a template to be easily produced with a pen. Local businesses (such as grocery store, greengrocer), I made a simple template (made by PVC stencil with laser cut) so that they can easily produce label. I bought 60mm half beads from places selling hobby materials for embossed letters. There are about 4500 beads in 500 grams, the price is around 15 TL ($3)

The laser cut stencil looks a little dirty as it is producing from recycle materials.

You can download and use all the works, and I am sure you can produce a lot of work.

PS: There are individuals with low vision among the visually impaired, and if you perform high-contrast studies (such as white in black), you will also provide easy reading for them.

thank you for reading.

Safak.