FD offers barcoded gravestones for tributes in a touch

A Funeral Director from Poole has become the first in the UK to offer a new service that turns headstones into interactive tributes to the departed.

When scanned with a smartphone, Quick Response (QR) codes placed on gravestones allow visitors to find out about the person laid to rest there, by launching a website containing their biography.

Biography pages can contain a person’s profile, photographs, videos and a comments section for tributes from visitors.

Codes allow for graveyard visitors to learn more about a person than their name, date of birth and date of death, while a password allows those who know it to update the website with more comments and memories.

Managing director of Chester Pearce in Poole, the first funeral directors to offer the service, Stephen Nimmo said: “I thought we could use technology to provide more information about people who have died to bring back the memories.”

QR codes are etched onto a small granite or metal square before they are embedded or glued onto a gravestone.

“People can make their websites as simple or as complicated as they would like and add as much or as little information as they want,” Mr Nimmo continued.

“I am a very traditional funeral director but using this technology is a positive way to help remember people. People often wander around cemeteries and look at gravestones and wonder who that person was. By using the QR codes they can find out.”