Seiichi Miyake

was a Japanese engineer and inventor best known for his work on tactile paving (or "Tenji bricks", "Tactile bricks/blocks") to aid the visually impaired at traffic crossings. Miyake's system of tactile paving was first introduced at a school for the blind in Okayama City on 18 March 1967, and has since been adopted around the world.

Early life Seiichi Miyake was born on 5 February 1926 in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture.

Inventing tactile bricks

In 1965, Seiichi Miyake used his own money to create tactile bricks, which have patterns of raised shapes on their surfaces that can be detected by touch. He invented the blocks to help a friend who was starting to have visual impairment. These patterns indicate different safety or hazard conditions, such as raised dots or blisters for "caution", or long parallel strips for "safe to move ahead". They were also used to identify the boundary between footpath and the road.

Tactile pavement surfaces were first introduced for pedestrian crossing in streets in 1965 by the Japanese engineer Seiichi Miyake. A regular pattern of flattened domes, cones or blisters are introduced in the paving at the edge of the footpath and the road. By 1985, it was mandated for broader use in Japan.

On 18 March 2019, Google Doodle honoured him by creating a short animation of a person with a probing cane being moved over tactile bricks.