[Nfb-krafters-korner] tactile graphics

[Blindhands at aol.com]

How cool is this?!  I have a Blaisey embosser, it  probably  won't work on 
that one.  I will have to check it  out.  Wouldn't it be cool if we could 
create charted patterns in a tactile  form?
 
Joyce  Kane
_www.KraftersKorner.org_ (http://www.krafterskorner.org/) 
Blindhands at AOL.com   

 
In a message dated 9/20/2011 11:29:50 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
b.butterfly at comcast.net writes:

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/
1 of 1  File(s)  
ATT00001.txt


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