Perception of texture with dot pattern and striped pattern for tactile guide maps on human forefinger

"Barrier-free New Law" was recently enacted in Japan. Therefore, many Braille signs and tactile guide maps have been installed at various buildings, stations and other public facilities. However, many unsatisfactory tactile guide maps appeared around us. Therefore, Japanese Standards Association enacted Standardized Method of Displaying Tactile Guide Maps in March 2007. However, rules and regulations about perception of texture with dot pattern and striped pattern for tactile guide maps were not contained. In this study, for the purpose of proposing useful texture with striped pattern for tactile maps, we examined the perception of texture with dot pattern and striped pattern on human forefinger. We made dot pattern and striped pattern test pieces with varying dot-distance and line-distance by screen-printing and asked ten subjects to clarify texture with striped-pattern (such as high density and low density) by the method of successive categories. As these results indicate, relation between dot and line distance and "perception of texture with dot pattern and striped pattern" on human forefinger became clear.