Tactile maps of historical gardens: method of content selection

Abstract

Historical gardens are a significant part of the cultural heritage. Exploration of such gardens is an important element of education. A particular challenge is to increase the accessibility of these facilities for the people with visual impairments (PVI). Among the aids enabling PVI visiting the gardens are tactile maps. The currently used tactile maps focus mainly on orientation and mobility. They do not allow exploration of gardens as a spatial composition, taking into account their cultural values. Therefore, the aim of our study was to develop the rules for content selection of tactile maps presenting those features of gardens that decide about their value, and to formalize these rules using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In this research we analyzed features of 15 gardens in the five garden design styles: Baroque, Renaissance, English, Romantic, and Japanese. In result, we have proposed the way of mapping of the five garden design styles in a form useful for PVI. We have defined the procedure of content selection, as well as the catalogues of elements to be mapped at different levels of details, distinguishing repetitive and unique elements of each style. Finally, we have defined the easy-to-use list of content elements of tactile maps in the five design styles. Our solutions are described in a formalized way that allows their unambiguous understanding and universal application. The proposed solutions contribute to increasing the accessibility of gardens to PVI and allow them to learn about the values of cultural heritage of such places.

UV printed tactile maps of historic parks

“…1) on a case study the map of Romantic Park in Arkadia, Poland, at the first level of detail, i.e. the entire garden composition (Zwirowicz-Rutkowska et al, 2023). This park is an example of landscape parks with naturalistic plant formations.…”

“…We searched the open spatial databases for vector features that represent the romantic style, in four categories: arrangement, vegetation, water, small architecture, based on our previous methodology (Zwirowicz-Rutkowska et al, 2023). We used open sources of spatial data that fit our criteria.…”

Evaluation of Qualitative Colour Palettes for Tactile Maps

“…While not intended for navigation, these maps convey the characteristics of parks designed in specific styles. To date, we have published our research on content selection for maps of parks in specific styles: renaissance, baroque, English, romantic, and Japanese [19] and on the methodology of testing tactile cartographic symbols in isolation and in context [20]. In this study, the focus is on the graphic content, specifically the colours used to differentiate area features.…”