Disney Creates Low Cost Solution for Blind to ‘Feel Fireworks

Imagine feeling the dazzling Disney fireworks display — when you cannot see them.

Disney Research is working on a way to share the fireworks experience with the blind and visually-impaired.

The system uses water jets that spray onto a screen, which are synced up with the show in the sky.

Feeling Fireworks is aimed at making fireworks more inclusive

for blind and visually impaired users, in a novel experience that can be shared by all. Tactile effects are created using directable water jets that spray onto the rear of a flexible screen, with different nozzles for different firework effects.

It is low-cost and allows for dynamic tactile effects to be rendered with high spatial resolution. A user study demonstrated that the tactile effects are meaningful analogs to the visual fireworks that they represent, with sighted users able to label the correct correspondence of tactile-to-visual effects by a large margin over chance. Beyond the specific application, the technology represents a novel and cost-effective approach for making large scalable tactile displays, with the potential for wider use.

Source: Disney Research