Four Genoa teenagers built a tablet that lets blind people feel — and make — art

It started with a museum visit. At Genoa's Palazzo Reale, four students — Benedetta Argentoni, 16, Elia Pedemonte, 17, Nicolò Ghio, 17, and Claudio Cassavia, 15 — saw a tactile copy of a painting and learned how slow and expensive such copies are to make. So they built Omero: a tablet whose surface of 25 individually controlled points rises to form images you can feel, with sounds linked to colours for another layer of sense. They tested it with blind and visually impaired volunteers at Genoa's David Chiossone Foundation and improved it from their feedback. Presented in Hyderabad, India, their project was named one of four winners of the World Robot Olympiad STEM Entrepreneur Program — earning a $5,000 award and six months of industry mentoring. 'We wanted to help blind and visually impaired people experience existing artworks,' said Benedetta. 'But as we developed Omero, we realised we could go further — and give people a way to create their own art through touch and sound.'

SDG 10 · Reduced inequalities — Mechanism: tech innovation