Preparing Tactile Graphics for Traditional Braille Printers with BrlGraphEditor
ICCHP '02 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs
Access by Blind Students and Professionals to Mainstream Math and Science
ICCHP '02 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs
Sparsha: a comprehensive indian language toolset for the blind
Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
Automating tactile graphics translation
Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
Automated interpretation and accessible presentation of technical diagrams for blind people
The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia - Special issue: Accessible hypermedia and multimedia
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Tactile graphics allow the visually impaired to perceive two-dimensional imagery, which is an essential part of experiencing the world and learning several subjects such as science and geography. In the developed world, such graphics are available to blind students from an early age, and students grow up familiar with tactile representations of images. The production of tactile graphics, however, requires extensive manual labor by sighted people, or costly graphical braille printers. Thus, blind students in developing regions often grow up without any exposure to these learning aids and as a consequence are often prevented from studying the sciences. In this work, we explore the potential of enhancing access to tactile graphics in the developing world through a software tool that can convert images to a form that can be printed as tactile images using lower-cost braille text printers. We investigate the effectiveness of this tool in producing different types of tactile graphics, and also explore the impact of these graphics on students and visually impaired teachers at a school for the blind in India. We find that our subjects are highly enthusiastic about tactile graphics, are quickly able to understand them, and learn how to write the alphabet using them.