- February 20, 2026
- By John Tucker
Meron Zekarias hunched over a classroom table, chewing on a homework question: If a car traveled 400 meters in 20 seconds, how fast did it go?
The eighth-grader, who was killing time between classes at Westland Middle School in Bethesda, Md., last Wednesday, murmured, “Twenty meters a second.” But instead of scribbling it in a workbook, he pressed his fingers on numeric tiles with Braille markings and slid them across a magnetic board.
As Meron, who is legally blind, continued his assignment, Byungseok Yoo, a University of Maryland associate research scientist of aerospace engineering, stood at his side. Yoo is hardly a pedagogy expert—he studies and builds sensors for airplanes, bridges and other vulnerable structures for a living—but he’s invested in the 13-year-old’s learning, having designed the tiles he’s using.
Over the past several months, Yoo has created a suite of 3D-printed materials for visually impaired public school students in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Howard counties, along with the School for the Blind in Baltimore. Yoo’s project is funded by UMD’s Do Good Campus Fund, which fosters projects that reimagine learning and serve humanity inside and outside the classroom.
His kits address concepts like math symbols, chemical elements and, most recently, anatomical diagrams for sex ed lessons. School districts across the country use similar tools, but Yoo’s prototypes are larger, easier to move, cheaper to produce and marked with Braille in each case, he and Montgomery school officials said.
Meron seemed to appreciate the tiles’ design. “I like them because the Braille is a little bigger,” he said. “They also spin a little easier”—necessary for numerical alignment.
Meron has moppy hair, Puma sweats and a neon-blue, ginormous backpack. Carrying a mobility cane and accompanied by a paraeducator, he attends standard classes and receives periodic one-one instruction. The specialized classroom he used as a workspace last Wednesday features Braille versions of a world map, the periodic table of elements and books like “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.”
[$415K Awarded From Do Good Campus Fund]
Tactile teaching tools are essential for students’ future independence, said Aimee Scheib, a specialist who teaches about 20 of Montgomery County’s nearly 300 visually impaired students, including Meron. “They level the playing field and help students keep pace and engage in classroom discussions.”
Byungseok Yoo
Yoo's kits address concepts like math symbols, chemical elements and anatomical diagrams for sex ed lessons. They are relatively cheap to produce and marked with Braille in each case.
The idea behind Yoo’s first instructional aid came from his wife. A Montgomery County paraeducator until recently, Soo Kim in 2024 became frustrated by her elementary school’s “swing cell,” a six-section tool the size of a deck of cards used to teach Braille, typically with six movable pegs and a block of wood. Purchased from a printing house that supplies education materials for programs serving blind and low-vision people across the country, the instrument was “clunky,” she said, and pegs would come loose.
Pegs sometimes fell from one third-grader’s holes in the middle of class, forcing the girl to hunt for them on the floor, Kim recalled.
Kim encouraged Yoo to build a swing cell with his 3D printer, and he produced a prototype featuring two polymers and six buttons that snap into place, eliminating the need for pegs. Kim showed the product to her boss, who was impressed. A few months later, Yoo learned about UMD’s Do Good grants, offering the opportunity to print more swing cells for Montgomery County. (Scheib now keeps one looped around her tote bag strap at all times.) Since then, he expanded from swing cells to the suite of tools he’s since designed.
Yoo last year offered a demo at the annual gathering of the Teachers of the Visually Impaired Steering Committee, run by the Maryland Department of Education, which sparked several conversations about potential partnerships, he said.
“3D-printing technology has the potential to transform learning environments for these students and shift instructional paradigms,” he said.
Terps Do Good
The University of Maryland is the nation's first Do Good campus, committed to inspiring Terps to make a positive impact now through research, public service and education. See more stories about Terps doing good at today.umd.edu/topic/do-good.