Six-and-a-Half-Year Practice of Tactile Map Creation Service.

To disseminate the use of tactile maps, a tactile map creation service has been offered according to the demands of blind people and their helpers. From June 2010 to December 2016, 151 tactile maps were created. Three quarters of them were maps of outdoor areas and one fifth were floor plans of a building or property. Half of the outdoor area maps were mobility maps and the other half were city maps. The service users' comments confirmed the usefulness of tactile maps as route maps and as providing information on a city. However, it was revealed that these tactile maps are too complicated for late blind people.