Text-based Tactile Graphics Generation for the Visually Impaired

Tactile graphics are a primary medium for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals to access non-textual information. However,they are difficult to scale or personalize. While recent generative modelshave revolutionized visual content creation, they are optimized for screen-based visual realism and fail to satisfy the haptic perceptual and physicalfabrication constraints required for touch. We present the first integratedgenerative system that produces fabrication-ready 2.5D tactile graphicsdirectly from natural language prompts, jointly generating global basegeometry, fine-grained tactile surface textures, and standard-compliantbraille within a unified 3D-printable representation. Our approach intro-duces fabrication-aware techniques, including template-guided relief gen-eration, a fast diffusion-based text-to-texture module for high-resolutiontileable normal maps, and strict base flattening to ensure tactile readabil-ity and printability, while supporting both automatic generation and in-teractive texture control. Extensive evaluations, together with in-personuser studies with BLV participants and blindfolded sighted participantsusing physically 3D-printed outputs, show that participants consistentlyprefer our results over baselines. By extending generative graphics be-yond screens to touchable reliefs, our work broadens access to generativeAI for the BLV community and beyond. The code and project webpageare available at https://ruihangao.github.io/Text2TactileGraphics/.