[Blindmath] How important is tactile access to graphs (discuss) ; )

[John Gardner]

Hello all, I am happy to hear the strong support for including tactile
diagrams.  However, in most textbooks there are images that are, well, just
eye candy, and it really isn't necessary to have tactile diagrams for them.
For example it is common to have photographs of people, and I believe that
it would be quite sufficient to have a text description of who the people
are.  In some books, the great majority of images are eye candy.  In most
math and science textbooks, this is not so, and it is really necessary to
have that tactile.  

FYI the Smith Kettlewell Institute has developed an analysis application
that looks at images and gives probabilities as to what they are.  For
example, standard graphs, bar and pie charts, flow diagrams can all be
recognized pretty accurately.  These should definitely have tactile and
descriptions.  Photographs, cartoons, etc can be recognized with somewhat
lower probability. These are usually just illustrations of what's in the
text, and most can be just as accessible with a good descriptive sentence or
two.

I do understand one's concern about leaving the judgement to a transcriber.
Today it is certainly true that too many important images are left out
largely because of the time/money cost of transcribing them.  If the cost
could be made very small, then judgements might improve.  In the future,
accessible books are almost certainly gonna be distributed as DAISY/EPUB. I
recommend that they include tactile graphics for important images but that
all images be included in the EPUB document.  So any given reader can at
least request a sighted friend to make a judgement if she suspects that an
image is more important than the transcriber did.

John
-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Amanda Lacy
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 10:15 AM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] How important is tactile access to graphs (discuss)
; )

I also would not trust most transcribers to make that judgment as to whether

or not a figure or graph is important. Many graphics have proven to be 
crucial for my understanding. Since I did not have access to them, my 
professor drew many of the diagrams on my arm or onto paper with a tracing 
wheel to convey concepts I could not pick up from the text.

Amanda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Birkir R. Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson at gmail.com>
To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics" 
<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 10:20 AM
Subject: [Blindmath] How important is tactile access to graphs (discuss) ; )


> Hey gang
>
> Last topic for discussion for awhile.
> Since they have been so lively I want to weigh in on this topic, which
> probably will not have any exact answers.
> I certainly appreciate the increased possibilities for tactile
> exploration that machines like the Iveo are offering, but I wonder how
> important access to every graph in a book is to a blind student, one
> that is not used to thinking visually and, perhaps, is better served
> by other means.
> I am not suggesting that graphs should be taken of the table
> altogether, quite on the contrary, but I wonder whether intelligent
> sifting of graphs in a text book might not be a better idea, at lesat
> until technology has moved to a point where SVG is more commonly
> accepted as part of HTML5 and graph production is less costly and
> problematic.
> Even then, to what extent have people here relied on tactile graphs.
> Have you felt you needed access to every graph in the book. Has
> exploring a graph tactilly helped you understand concepts, theories
> and shapes, and made your life over-all easier?
> I know there is an ever-increasing emphasis on visual clues and aides
> in text books, starting pretty much in the first grade, but I wonder
> to what extent tactile access will benefit blind kids.
> Again, I want to stress that I am pleased to see this possibility
> becoming more and more realistic with the work of ViewPlus mainly, I
> am merely wondering if we can deploy this technique in a most
> efficient manner by a better understanding of what graphs will be most
> beneficial to reproduce, and thereby limiting the cost of graph
> convertion and avoiding the production of graphs that do not really
> add much to the student's ease of learning.
> (appologies if there are typos in this email. Since my latest Windows
> update yesterday, Jaws has stopped functioning in edit more in IE, I
> am trying to figure out why this is and will submit as a bug if I find
> no explanations).
> -B
>
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