The challenge was to find a new and unseen design approach to promote the foundations work and generate awareness of their 175-year-existence in a range of communication levels. Within the big anniversary celebration at the famous town hall of Frankfurt, an exhibition with posters, a film and installations in the lobby, we came up with a whole range of new visual and audio-visual ideas to discuss the term of blindness in Germany. To integrate printed matter and online – equally understandable for the blind, visually impaired as well as the seeing was the most challenging aspect of the whole project.

The design-concept combines the topics blindness, visual impairment as well as braille alphabet and connects them to the history of the foundation. Acuity, blurring, Braille alphabet and typography appear in the motifs constantly in new contexts and continuously surprise the observer with new approaches.

Translating the printed contents into an online experience resulted in a one of a kind, audio-visual idea: The headlines of all chapters were translated into Braille, transferred onto lines of the staff, and consequently recorded instrumentally. It opened up an unseen way of communication of blind and visually impaired people – the Braille-alphabet made typography audible.

For the first time, it was possible for blind people to access said contents directly with the help of a browser or mobile device, without having to configurate and install an audio response programm or download a podcast. Furthermore, the visual concept was made accessible by providing audible descriptions. It was also possible for seeing people to experience the content online as visually impaired or blind users would, to access the film and look at the individual chapters of the book interactively, as well as listen to the musical interpretation of each chapter where the typography was made audible.