Diretrizes para o uso da manufatura aditiva como ferramenta geradora de informação visual para pessoas com deficiência visual: o design como peça fundamental no processo de inclusão Design de Artefatos Digitais.
visually impaired people; 3D printing; additive manufacturing; FFF; FDM; guidelines; accessibility.
The survey scanned the scientific literature and heard people about the tactile content creation for visually impaired individuals. From the data collected, two experiments were developed and applied. The first investigated alternative materials to serve as a basis for the use of 3D printing, to reduce production costs. It also evaluated the adherence of different values of width, height, and angles of the contour lines, as well as different geometric shapes and top/bottom fill patterns on these materials. The second experiment selected the best results from the first study and submitted them to 28 visually impaired volunteers using activities on every-day-based skills: locating and following a line (exploration), discerning different textures (tactile discrimination), identifying figures (picture comprehension), and locate copies of them (spatial comprehension). The results show it is possible to use cellulose-based materials weighing between 120 g/m² and 180 g/m² to support the prints instead of making a base for the information, with gains from 670% to 4050% in production time, and from 769% to 2914.29%, in the consumption of materials, if there is no need to fold the manufactured content. The ideal widths for printing are between 0.8 mm and 1.2 mm. The best performance heights in volunteers’ activities are between 0.2 mm and 0.4 mm. The ideal angles are between 0° and 20° about a sheet twist axis. The shapes must receive small rounding at the corners and preferably align themselves with the mentioned angles. The top/bottom fill patterns do not affect adhesion. The infill can be used as a texture generator and should be adjusted to densities of 10% to 50%, or 10% to 90% when combined with other textures. Vision status (low vision or complete loss) and vision loss status (congenital blinder or late blinder) did not influence the results. Schooling affected the activities of identifying objects and locating their copies. In the Conclusion section, there is a detailed list of recommendations for the production and application of tactile materials, which range from simplifying forms to encouraging the use of both hands during content assimilation