Acumen receives overwhelming response at IIDEX 2014.
December 3, 2014 at 9:00am marked a historic moment as Acumen Visual Group and Novapolymers became member of IIDEX, Canada’s National Design + Architecture Exposition & Conference community of exhibitors. The Metro Toronto Convention Centre played host to Architects, Interior Designers, Environmental Designers and Emerging Professionals transforming the iconic convention space into a vibrant urban village showcasing the best and brightest of our design community.
Through December 3rd to 4th visitors from across North America and around the world experienced booth #831 themed ‘Accessible Signage for the Built Environment’. The response was overwhelming as each visitor spoke of the timing and relevance of experiencing an informative exhibit that explained the nuances of AODA and ADA as it pertains to signage for the built environment.
Our display featured various design build iterations and innovative material hybrids made of Novacryl tactile braille combined with 3form Varia Ecoresin, room ID, washroom and stairwell signage, dual messaging, tactile floor mapping and handrail wrapping, just to name a few. Wayfinding signage became the perfect vehicle for telling this important story. Our design build methodology and philosophical principals are conducive to the standards and ethics of accessibility for the blind in that it promotes a form of independence through liberating the act of mobility. As one visitor put it “from farm to fork you seemed to have effectively covered advocacy, the intricacies of manufacturing and applied product innovation of braille all within a 10’x20’ booth.
It is a reminder to us as manufacturers that Accessibility as a product medium carries with it principals of human rights; that solutions need not be apologetic or secondary in thought and practice in addresses the sensorium of need states for the blind. Improvisation can solve the most abstract of need states, and that tactile signage can provide a connective narrative providing meaning and context to spatial realms.