[Mabs] Fw: Drawing tool for STEM students

[Bryan Schulz]

    sounds cool especially if you have an embosser.
Bryan Schulz


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "S A. Marositz" <SAMAROSITZ at pasadena.edu>
To: <trainer-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 10:22 AM
Subject: [Trainer-talk] Drawing tool for STEM students


>
>
> Stephen A. Marositz
>
> Assistive Technology Specialist
>
> Pasadena City College
>
> 626.585.7242
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lisa Yayla [mailto:Lisa.Yayla at statped.no]
> Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 12:41 AM
> To: Alternate Media
> Cc: 'baldwin at austincc.edu'
> Subject: SV: captioning question
>
> Hi,
> Forwarding an email from Richard Baldwin,Professor of Computer Information 
> Technology
> about a drawing tool for VI STEM students.
> Regards,
>
> Lisa
>
>
> This message is intended mainly for teachers of blind or visually impaired 
> students in STEM courses. Of course, this is a public forum and everyone 
> is welcome to read the message and provide comments as appropriate.
>
> Having been the sighted teacher of a blind student for several years, I 
> firmly believe that making it possible for blind and visually impaired 
> people, and particularly blind and visually impaired students in STEM 
> courses, to communicate using accurate printed and tactile graphics will 
> improve the quality of life and the likelihood of academic success for 
> those students.
> I have written a computer program that makes it possible, for the first 
> time in history, for blind and visually impaired people to create such 
> graphics in an accessible and user-friendly way.
> Version 0.0.8 of my drawing program for blind students is now posted and 
> available for free and immediate download at:
> http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/SWT-SVG/SVGDraw01.zip
> Three components are necessary to accomplish the goal of widespread 
> graphics communication among blind and visually impaired students and 
> their teachers:
> * Availability of a robust and universally accepted graphics standard.
> * Availability of a robust, accessible, and user-friendly drawing program 
> that allows blind people to take advantage of the SVG standard.
> * Availability of high-quality, economical, and readily available graphics 
> embossing equipment.
> A robust graphics standard - SVG
> A robust and universally accepted graphics standard is already available 
> in the form of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). See Scalable Vector 
> Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition)
> An accessible and user-friendly drawing program - SVGDraw01
> I have written and provided, free of charge, a drawing program that blind 
> and visually impaired people can use to draw pictures. To the best of my 
> knowledge, no other existing program provides that capability. (If such a 
> program exists, it is a well-kept secret.) Thus, for the first time in 
> history, your students can express themselves using graphics.
> While many drawing programs exist, they are written for use by sighted 
> people and not for use by blind people. My program is designed and written 
> specifically for use by blind and visually impaired people.
> Even though my program is still under development, it already provides the 
> capability for STEM students to create graphics that mirror many of the 
> figures and diagrams typically found in STEM textbooks.
> A graph board on steroids
> As a teacher of blind or visually impaired students, you might think of 
> this program as bringing the old-fashioned graph board into the computer 
> age. Students and others using this program can create both printed and 
> tactile graphics using many of the same thought processes that they would 
> use when constructing a "drawing" on a graph board using pushpins, rubber 
> bands, a protractor, and a measuring stick.
> For example, one student might use this program to create and send an SVG 
> file to a friend with the message "Take a look at the cool floor plan of 
> my new apartment."
> Another student might use this program to create and send an SVG file to a 
> college professor with the message "This is a free body diagram showing 
> the magnitude and directions of forces F21 and F23 caused by the 
> interactions among charges q1, q2, and q3."
>
>
> Getting an immediate visual output
> I will be adding new capabilities over time. However, I probably won't add 
> capabilities that would not be useful to blind and visually impaired 
> users. For example, the program does not, by default, produce an immediate 
> visual output. The primary output is intended to be a printer, a graphics 
> embosser, or both. But, if you are sighted, or if you are blind and using 
> the vOICe sonification software to view the progress of your drawing, you 
> can use a procedure described in the attached file to view your drawing as 
> it progresses.
> High-quality, economical, and readily-available graphics embossing 
> equipment
> This is the area where we fall short relative to achieving our widespread 
> graphics communications goal. Although high-quality embossing equipment is 
> available in the marketplace, it is not economical (by computer standards) 
> nor is it readily available for the personal use of most blind students.
> I view this as a supply and demand problem. Prior to the release of my 
> program, there were no robust, accessible, and user-friendly tools that 
> made it possible for blind people to create  accurate graphics for use 
> with a high-quality embosser. Thus, the demand for such embossing 
> equipment has been very limited. My hope is that by making it possible for 
> all blind people to create accurate graphics, the demand for such 
> embossing equipment will go up and the costs for the equipment will come 
> down.
> Even today, however, many schools, colleges, and other organizations own 
> high-quality graphics embossing equipment that they can make available to 
> their blind and visually impaired clientele on some basis. In those cases, 
> there is no reason for blind people to hold back from learning to 
> communicate using graphics.
> My drawing program is freely available for you and your students to use. 
> As a teacher, it is up to you to connect your blind and visually impaired 
> students to those available hardware embossing resources.
> The attached HTML file is the User-Instruction file for my drawing program 
> named SVGDraw01.
> Please feel free to forward this message to others who may have an 
> interest in the use of graphics by blind and visually impaired people.
> Richard Baldwin
> Professor of Computer Information Technology
> Austin Community College
> baldwin at austincc.edu
> http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
>
> -Scanned by Exchange Hosted Services-
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Trainer-talk mailing list
> Trainer-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/trainer-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> Trainer-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/trainer-talk_nfbnet.org/b.schulz%40sbcglobal.net