Lauren Lee | March 7, 2025 - Atlanta, GA

“I’ve been totally blind since birth, and, for me, my experiences have always revolved around touch and my non-visual sense.”

Lindsay Yazzolino—tactile experience designer, accessibility technology consultant, and member of the newly-created Tactile Media Alliance—wants tactile experiences not only for people like her, but for everyone. Why?  

“You could think of it in a very educational context…but it’s also important because [tactile experiences] are just part of life.”

That’s why Dr. Abigale Stangl, Director of MultiSense.Studio and Assistant Professor at the College of Industrial Design launched the Tactile Media Alliance. 

Related: What is Tactile Media? 

“People need media that is accessible to them to learn,” says Dr. Stangl. “Without documents that are tagged with headers, without videos that have captions or descriptions, people commonly cannot access that content. One of the primary ways in which we can make information non-visually accessible is through the sense of touch.”

And that is one of the primary goals of the Tactile Media Alliance: exploring the ways tactile media can be used to communicate and enhance learning, and opening new avenues for blind people to enter creative industries like industrial design. 

Students from around the world are already fulfilling part of that mission. 

“I submitted my inclusive modular fidget system, Tac-tiles, with no formal knowledge about the tactile and embodied learning space, but was curious and ready to learn more,” says Colin Putman, student at University of Cincinnati. “When the co-organizers of the Student Design Competition–Georgia Tech HCI PhD students Yasmine Belghith and Niharika Mathur working with Dr. Stangl– contacted me and let me know that I was a finalist in the Student Design Competition, and that I would be able to participate in-person at the conference with leading academics and professionals, I was ecstatic."

Victoria Gamez, fourth year Industrial Design student, co-designed her winning project with Lindsay Yazzolino. “I never imagined I would be designing bat models, but it has reinforced the continuous practice of making the user’s needs the driving force behind design decisions, rather than my own. 

Madhuka De Silva and Jim Smiley, PhD, students at Monash University, were finalists for “translating 3D interactive design into a 2D representation, allowed us to showcase how sonification and haptic feedback can support dance learners who are blind or have low vision”.

If you’ve never heard of tactile media before, it might be hard to imagine exactly what it is. But there is a very famous form of tactile media that you already know about—braille. 

CIDI, housed in Georgia Tech’s College of Design, has one of the largest braille production lines in North America, and some of the country’s foremost experts in braille. 

Guy Toles, Associate Director of Research Operations and Braille Services Manager at CIDI, is one of those experts. 

'Braille is so important because it impacts literacy for someone who's blind or visually impaired. It promotes independence and it's also shown that it impacts educational advancement and employment for someone who's blind or visually impaired."

Armed with the knowledge that braille has had an immense impact on the literacy, self-confidence, and employment opportunities for those who are visually impaired, the Tactile Media Alliance hopes to expand those educational gains further, not only for the visually impaired, but for everyone. 

Dr. Stangl's parting words: 

“Just as the School of Industrial Design was founded on Bauhaus principles—prioritizing material exploration, functional design, and collaboration—the Tactile Media Alliance is bringing tactile media and embodied learning to the forefront of design education, a field long dominated by visual media. By embedding tactile media studies into design, we reveal new possibilities for multisensory interaction, accessibility, and innovation.  With support from the College of Design for efforts like the student design competition, the incredible leadership at CIDI and Braille Services and NSF AccelNet initiatives we are ensuring that tactile and multisensory experiences are not just accessibility tools but essential drivers of design research, inclusive technology, and new economic opportunities. This work is made possible through support of COD Dean Ellen Bassett,  SID Chair EunSook Kwon, MultiSense.Studio members, CodeCraft Lab, We-ID, the GT Arts@Tech initiative, and the Center for Teaching and Learning's Transformative Teaching and Learning initiative and Teaching with Technology Partnerships.”