[accessibleimage] Re: Accessible graphics programming using Logo and The vOICe

Hi Peter,
I LOVE turtle graphics and the whole idea behind Logo. It's purpose was to introduce children to the concepts of programing. Very intuitive. I have often wondered if this would be a good technique for drawing for blind people. It works with writing directions - ahead 10, turn left, ahead 10 etc. It was started at MIT by Seymour Papert http://papert.org/ resulting in a "philosophy" called, if I remember correctly, functionalism. 
Lego based it's Mindstorm kits on it. That is a kit for making robots.
There has been done some work by a MIT student some years back to make that system accessible for low-vision users. Unsure if I posted that on the list or not -if interested drop me a line and will send. A great book to read about it's use in a school situation is Children Designers by Idit Harel
To change the subject but stay on the same subject, I also wonder if SVG would also be a useful tool for drawing for VI people. That is one uses text to draw. Similar, in that you write to define a form, to Logo. It is not very difficult to hand code - what do you think? 

It is wonderful that you have this on your site Peter and for blind users!!!

Best,
Lisa



Peter Meijer wrote:

Hi All,

Some of you may be interested in tools for programming graphics
content. One way of working is to use so-called "turtle graphics"
programming in the Logo language. There is a nice free interpreter
for this language named MSWLogo. It allows you to program line
drawings, define shapes, and even create 3D graphics. Moreover,
it also can generate animated GIF images of the drawing stages.
Such GIF animations can be imported into The vOICe via Control O.
There is now a new draft web page describing this approach to
accessible graphics creation, at the URL

   http://www.seeingwithsound.com/turtle_graphics.htm

It contains an example of drawing a filled square in 2D and a
cube in 3D. In the final animated GIF image results you will
hear the sides of the square and cube appear in subsequent
soundscapes. Of course it takes some effort to first master the
Logo programming language. For an introduction to Logo you can
read the Wikipedia web page at the URL

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_programming_language

Best regards,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm

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