Serving the visually impaired: Tactile technology seeps into City Palace Jaipur and its artifacts

It is a task for visually challenged people to view things and get knowledge about its look, pattern, feel etc.

Introducing tactile in Jaipur museums and monuments:

Jaipur city is coming up with the services where the city will aim to help the visually challenged people (blind people) who visit museums and monuments. Such services will be commenced and delivered from the first week of the month of September 2016.

What’s tactile? Defining tactile.

To touch things and artifacts and feel them with the hand and get to know about its make, pattern etc is known as understanding them by way of tactile sense.

Preparing artifacts on tactile: Experiencing of tactile and its charge

Selected artifacts in the museums of Jaipur will be prepared on tactile technology to aid them to understand it in loss of their natural ability to see.
Such viewing and experiencing of tactile based things and artifacts by visually impaired people will be levied with a separate charge/payment of fees.

City Palace: First museum to accommodate tactile artifacts:

City Palace will be the first such museum of its kind in the state of Rajasthan where tactile services will be made available to the visitors.

Service and funding by:

The services of tactile are given and funded by Princess Diya Kumari Foundation.

Paintings and photographs on tactile:

7 photos and paintings from the painting and photography gallery of the City Palace museum will be readied up on the tactile technology and will be on display as well.
One such painting is the old map of the Jaipur city. Apart from this, paintings of Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh, royal procession of devi and elephants will be on display.
2 tactile photographs in the A4 sheet size of Maharaja Ram Singh will be on display too.

Tactile of fabrics and patterns:

Fabrics that are on display in the Textile Gallery in the Mubarak Mahal will also be recreated on tactile.
Ari Tari, Zardosi and Gotta Patti works and its designs will be on tactile.
These will be presented on a 6X6 display with original artifacts.

Architecture consultant working on City Palace artifacts tactile:

Heritage architecture consultant Mr. Siddhant Shah from the Mumbai city is working on the tactile experiences to be delivered to the visitors in the City Palace.
He revealed that majority of the times it is prohibited to touch things at a historical site, but here visually impaired people will get to know about the texture on the fabrics by way of touching only.

What’s used for tactile?

Emboss dry powder is used to prepare tactile.

Local artisan employed in tactile paintings:

Local artisans of the City Palace of Jaipur Meenu Devi and Arun Jain are working on the tactile of original artifacts by way of taking print outs.  

Time taken to prepare 1 tactile artifact:

It takes a period of about 4 months to prepare 1 tactile painting. With the help of textures and graphics, form has been rendered to the design of the artifact. This will help the visually challenged people to understand the designs.