[Blindmath] poorly prepared tactile graphics

[John Gardner]

I have been observing this interesting conversation and becoming more and
more convinced that there is something badly wrong here.  Why on earth
should one pay a braille transcriber a great deal of money to produce a
tactile graphic that one must order days, weeks, maybe months in advance
that in the end is not readable by a blind person when there is a much
faster better way to get this information?  Do we need forever to be locked
in 19'th centurey technologies when we are now in the 21'st century? 

Before I go on I want to be sure that everybody reading this knows that I am
about to describe a technology that was developed and that is for sale by my
company (ViewPlus).  A technology that I invented precisely because of such
problems that we see here in black and white.  

If you had a copy of IVEO Creator Pro, a touchpad, and some way to access a
ViewPlus embosser, you could just make yourself a copy of any graph you
wanted in a couple of minutes.  Better still, you could ask the university
service agency to do it for you.  They would import the file or scan the
paper image, maybe if they were really nice, crop out anything on the page
that is not part of the graph, then save it as a SVG file.  They would then
e-mail that SVG file to you and let you read it by the audio/touch method
using the free IVEo Viewer and your touchpad.  They could make the tactile
copy or let you make it yourself in the computer lab that has that ViewPlus
embosser.  The graph would be a perfect image of the original, which would
be a good graph if the author made a good one, or a lousy graph if the
author was an idiot, but at least you have exactly what the sighted reader
has.  You press a number on the x axis and it reads out in speech.  You
press the label and it reads out.  You have very quick access to precisely
the same graph that the sighted reader has.  You do not have a nice
free-standing braille copy that can be read without the touchpad.  But you
have almost real time access.  And the cost of the IVEo Creator Pro and
touchpad to your university is about what they would pay the braille
transcriber to make a single graphic.  They almost certainly already have
the ViewPlus embosser if they are a major university.

 John Gardner


-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Susan Mooney
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 5:14 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] poorly prepared tactile graphics

Unfortunately, there are several places producing braille which do not use
certified braille transcribers or anyone experienced with teaching braille
readers. Not all transcribers are great with tactile graphics and vice
versa.  It's usually a team effort.  Some graphics which make sense and are
useful to sighted students can become useless when rendered exactly for
blind students.  Modifications can be done which do not change the graphic
but do make it less cluttered and more easily discernible.  What looks
"pretty" and great to the eye can be totally useless to the blind reader.
Obviously it's very important for graphics to be precise but this precision
can be accomplished in a highly readable way, again w/o the clutter.  Some
graphics need to be displayed in what is called "overlays" or sections. 

I think it's helpful to not only you but to the braille production
agency/company to know what the errors or weaknesses are and how they can
correct them and/or modify the graphics.  It would also be helpful to tell
the alternate media office at your school that the work you received was sub
par and that they need to adjust payment or not use that particular company
again.  As with any product, when a company is hit in the pocket book it
forces them to change and bring their standards up.  Quality braille work is
done by quality places.  Blind students should not have to settle.

Susan M.
_______________________________________________
Blindmath mailing list
Blindmath at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Blindmath:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/john.gardner%40or
st.edu