2006 Living Buddhism photographic exhibition & Tactile Pictures Accessible for people with visual impairments
“See the pictures, feel the pictures”
The exhibition is spilt in to two halves, one featuring different aspects of life at the Milton Keynes Buddhist Peace Pagoda and Monastery, the other features Doug’s travels to Buddhist areas in France, the Himalayan Kingdoms of Nepal and Sikkim, and the Himachel Pradesh region of the Indian Himalayas.
The images have been made in to tactile pictures so that the photographic exhibition is accessible to the visually impaired and the blind. To create the tactile picture the original photographs are reduced into line images using Adobe PhotoShop. The images are then printed on to a special swell paper. The paper is passed through a heat roller that activates the swelling on any area of the paper that contains black or grey print to form the raised tactile pictures.
Doug Blane who is famous for his extreme sports photography said: “I am pleased that the Open University Library has given me this opportunity to exhibit my extensive Buddhist collection of pictures. By using tactile technology I have being able to make these pictures accessible for people with visual impairments. This is a very exciting new development for my work and I hope that everyone who visits to the exhibition can interpret them in their own way”.
“My aim has been to represent the living aspect of the Buddhist way of life with this photographic exhibition. The selection of pictures taken of the Milton Keynes Peace Pagoda & Monastery reflects the different aspects of life there, some Buddhist and some not. “
