[nabs-l] [Blindtlk] Use of the SVGDraw01 drawing program in STEM courses

[Chris Nusbaum]

This is really cool! Thoughts?

 Chris Nusbaum

"The real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight.  The 
real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of education that 
exists.  If a blind person has the proper training and 
opportunity, blindness can be reduced to a mere physical 
nuisance." -- Kenneth Jernigan (President of the National 
Federation of the Blind, 1968-1986.)

  Visit the I C.A.N.  Foundation online at: 
www.icanfoundation.info for
information on our foundation and how it helps blind and visually
impaired children in MD say "I can!"


Sent from my BrailleNote

 ---- Original Message ------
From: David Andrews <dandrews at visi.com
Subject: [Blindtlk] Use of the SVGDraw01 drawing program in STEM 
courses
Date sent: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:01:41 -0500


From: Richard Baldwin <baldwin at dickbaldwin.com
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:29:46 -0500
To: BlindMath Mailing List <blindmath at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindmath] Use of the SVGDraw01 drawing program in STEM 
courses

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) <http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/
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.

Richard Baldwin
Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
baldwin at austincc.edu
http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/

Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII; 
name="Instructions.htm"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Instructions.htm"
X-Attachment-Id: f_gsp41hv40

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Instructions.htm
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 47059 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/attachments/20110919/e8ecf2f9/attachment.obj>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: attachment
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 314 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/attachments/20110919/e8ecf2f9/attachment-0001.obj>