[Blindmath] Update to SVGToSIG

[Richard Baldwin]

This posting is targeted mainly at teachers and others who may be creating
drawings for blind students that are to be embossed on a 12 dot per inch
embosser. Blind and VI students who are the recipients of such drawings may
also want to point out this new capability to their teachers.

As a sighted author of various materials intended for use by blind and VI
students, I can personally attest to the value of being able to preview
such drawings onscreen to see what they will actually look like when
embossed at 12 dpi.

I am currently authoring a game math course, which is intended to be
accessible from the ground up. Wherever possible, I am striving to make all
of the drawings usable when embossed at 12 dpi. I know that if they are
usable at 12 dpi, they will be even better at 20 dpi or in the future
perhaps at 25 dpi.

Amanda was kind enough to provide a pre-release version of this program and
I have been using it to confirm the usability of the drawings that I am
including in the course.

It is difficult for a sighted person to predict how usable a drawing will
be when embossed at 12 dpi. A tremendous amount of information can be lost
when going from a standard printer drawing with hundreds of pixels per inch
to an embossed drawing at 12 dpi. Considerable thought must be given to the
design of the drawing to make certain that the important information is not
lost in the conversion. On several occasions I have found it necessary to
go back and revise a drawing which, when previewed with Amanda's program,
proved to be unusable at 12 dpi without modification.

Amanda is to be commended for:

1. Making it possible for those who own 12-dpi embossers to emboss SVG
files, and

2. Providing sighted teachers and others with a very convenient way to
preview those files before delivering them to blind and VI students.

Dick Baldwin

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Amanda Lacy <lacy925 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've just updated my converter to include the option to display a
> graphical representation of what the file will look like when embossed at
> 12DPI. Sighted users and those using the vOICE no longer need view it in
> QuicTac.
> I've also shortened the link. It's here:
> http://nonvisualdevelopment.org/content/svgtosig-amanda-lacy
>
> Amanda
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-- 
Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
http://www.DickBaldwin.com

Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
(512) 223-4758
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