Cemento Sol encoded storefront info into tactile sidewalk tiles for blind pedestrians

Roughly half a million visually impaired people in Peru navigate city streets with a cane as their primary tool, but had no reliable way to identify what kind of business or service sat behind any given storefront without stopping to ask a stranger, or relying on a smartphone app that assumed data access, dexterity and battery life the person might not have in the moment.

Peruvian cement brand Cemento Sol and ad agency Circus Grey inverted the approach: instead of adding a device to the person, they treated the sidewalk itself — the one surface every cane-user in the city was already in constant physical contact with — as the information interface. New paving tiles installed at business entrances in the Miraflores district were cast with a distinct pattern of raised horizontal lines: two lines for a bank, three for a grocery store, four for a pharmacy, with vertical markers indicating which side of the street the entrance sat on.

Cemento Sol encoded business info into tactile paving tiles read by cane, turning the sidewalk itself into an accessible interface.

Cane users already sweep the sidewalk, so tactile tiles are read without new behavior.

No phone, app, or battery means no adoption barrier or maintenance cost.

Open patent lets other cities replicate the fix, multiplying impact.

Permanent tiles keep working indefinitely after installation, unlike digital campaigns.

Embed information into the surface your user already touches, rather than adding a device they must adopt and maintain.

The tactile tiles were installed across more than 75,000 square meters of Miraflores streets, reaching an estimated 500,000 visually impaired people in Peru, and — unlike a marketing campaign that ends when the media buy does — the physical tiles remain embedded in the sidewalk permanently, continuing to function with zero ongoing cost or maintenance requirement after installation. SightWalks won the Design Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, alongside four Gold, two Silver and one Bronze Lion.