When investigating into my customers needs it became apparent that clothing in the fashion industry is often complicated for the visually impaired to understand. The use of fastenings on garments was often a difficult issue for them to understand and often limits there accessibility to clothing.
For example these garments from current fashion designers have obstacles such as; multiple, mock, overlapping and non traditional fastenings, which could be difficult for my consumer.
Solving the Problem:
In order to make fastenings more accessible for my target consumer, to make fastenings more adventurous and fashionable I have combined 3D Printing and Embroidery to create an innovative button hole system.
This is a sample of three button holes paired with braille embroidery:
This button hole is paired with braille embroidery reading 'One'
This button hole is paired with braille embroidery reading 'Two'
This button hole is paired with braille embroidery reading 'Three'
These button holes can now be paired with a 3D printed button with the numbers in braille printed on them and they will correspond to each button hole. This means that during the design process I can create garments with complicated fastenings which are still accessible to my customer.
Unfortunately the technician team didn't have enough time to process my request for a sample 3D button, however I have made a simulation of what the buttons would look like using Adobe Illustrator.
During the design development stage this braille button system helped me to design the idea of removable garment sections.
