The current labour context is increasingly changing, driven by the continuous blooming of technological changes. So, the integration of recent graduates to the labour market, as new professionals, demand the acquisition of not only each field's specific Hard Skills, but also generic, transversal Soft Skills which might facilitate the adaptation of these professionals to future contexts, while enabling them to develop their work career in a responsible way, as well as increasing their entrepreneurial spirit. These abilities are especially relevant in the field of design engineering, as the idiosyncrasy of the discipline leads their practitioners to offering solutions to diverse problems society and users have. So their professional development is inextricably linked to social changes and society evolution. In this way, in the "Sustainable Development Goal 4, Education 2030" (SDG4-Education 2030), regarding targets and commitments, the UNESCO defines the needs to emphasize the development of high-level cognitive and non-cognitive/transferable skills, such as problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, communication skills or conflicts resolution, which can be applied across a wide range of occupational fields.
Tactile graphics (TG) are intended to facilitate communication for people with total or partial visual impairment. For this purpose, TG include elements in relief that can be perceived through the sense of touch. TG can be fixed or portable. Fixed TG are expensive, as they are typically produced in very short runs, mostly single part production. Portable TG can be made by thermoforming polymer sheets, but a mould is still required, even though production runs are short (some tens). For this reason, the use of Rapid Manufacturing (RM) and Rapid Tooling (RT) strategies to manufacture TG can be of great interest. In this work, a literature review to study the application of Additive Manufacturing (AM) to obtain TG, both as RM and RT, is carried out. The review reveals the suitability of AM techniques to manufacture TG. In addition, some AM techniques are analysed to be used for a new type of TG, which is based on the deposition of glaze on ceramic tiles.
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