Touch and Match: A Fashion Show By, With and For Blind and VI People

forthcoming

Touch’n Match: A Fashion Show By, With and For Blind and VI People is a 14-month transnational cooperation project that empowers blind and visually impaired individuals to engage with fashion as a form of creative expression, identity, and cultural participation. At the heart of the project is an AI-powered mobile application that uses the internationally awarded Scripor Alphabet to translate colours, textures, and outfit combinations into multisensory experiences through voice guidance and tactile feedback. Unlike existing tools, the app fosters styling autonomy, enabling users to independently curate and explore their personal style. Implemented in Romania, Poland, and Austria, the project engages blind and visually impaired individuals, many of them women and Ukrainian refugees now living in the partner countries, in co-creation workshops, user testing, and inclusive fashion mentoring. Their creative work culminates in a landmark event at Transilvania Fashion Festival 2026: a public fashion show conceived and presented by blind and visually impaired participants themselves. Touch’n Match is directly aligned with Call Objective 2 – Innovation, enhancing the capacity of Europe’s cultural and creative sectors to integrate inclusive, tech-driven approaches and nurture underrepresented talents. The cross-sector consortium brings together NGOs, accessibility pioneers, fashion professionals, and seconded experts from Spain and Ukraine, fostering digital transition, cross-border learning, and social equity in the arts. Through co-design, user empowerment, and public engagement, Touch’n Match delivers an accessible app, open-source resources, and multilingual dissemination tools. Building on prior EU-funded projects such as the WORTH Partnership Project, it offers a scalable, transferable model for inclusive innovation in the creative industries, proving that fashion can be a platform for empowerment, visibility, and full cultural participation.