[Nfb-krafters-korner] tactile graphics

Tue Sep 20 17:31:41 UTC 2011

I have begun experimenting with this as it was passed to me first by
Bonnie Lucas; it's quite an effective little program.  I haven't had a
chance to hook it up to an embosser yet; that's one of my to-dos this
week on a couple of levels.

On 9/20/11, Becky Frankeberger <b.butterfly at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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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