[accessibleimage] Re: Tactile audio graphics

Hello John Gardner, nice of you to say that about TGD tactile audio stuff.
As I have told you personally and on these pages, your SVG - TIGER combo is
worth waiting for and I look forward to seeing it in operation at Sight
Village Birmingham, UK in July. I understand that View Plus is a major
sponsor this year - well done. I need some sponsorship John .....!
I avoided this wonderful LIST service for a long time precisely because I
did not feel I should always respond on matters graphical - by reference to
TGD systems - but there is clearly and at last a growing interest in this
field. I can either refer people to my SIMPLE web site where low vision and
blind people can handle what is essentially text - or/and I can say a few
things here ! I'll do both until told to "be quiet for a while.."
Back to John Gardner. John, I don't think that anyone has been "frightened"
by Nomad or TGD AudioPIX, now in TGD Workshop. As I said, information has
been created and input by a 7 year old - what is daunting is the amount of
work there is to be done for all blind users, everywhere - not just in
wealthy places. The backlog of information that is essentially graphical is
indeed frightening but we also have to TEACH youngsters and recently blind
'adults' how to read graphics, how to enjoy reading them and if possible
CREATE them from THEIR own imagery - not only from screen capture. TGD
Workshop and its components are, as Kaye has said, probably best suited to
"home movies" (not Kaye's term!) - but you know what I mean. Mums and dads,
brothers and sisters and friends TOGETHER with a blind user, of any age can
construct tactile audio graphics (Tagraphics). ANY sort of tactile overlay
can be sound enhanced - and SMALL is better than BIG - so long as it fits
onto the US Letter A4 tablet.
As I wrote recently - TGD Workshop is a complete tactile audio graphics
production TOOL BOX, including TagPad, barcode reader (for making and
reading barcodes to load files), USB microphone for voice recognition in
self testing in AudioPIX (any images) and AudioBraille (Braille self tutor).
TGD QikTac enables drawing of ANYTHING directly to embossers or printers,
with or without TagPads - ANY image can be traced in moments. TGD TraceMe is
a sort of Paintbrush but it has capacity to import ANY BMP or JPG image, in
colour and convert to a line only image for printing to capsule paper - it
takes moments and a 7 year old can do it. Embosser output can also be
prepared and sent to QikTac for dot by dot editing. Braille can be input, or
pasted from Duxbury or entered one dot at a time as you wish in editing an
image. The TGD Workshop TOOL BOX will have AudioCAD added later in the year
FREE and also AudioTRIP. Both have been around in past lives - AudioCAD will
have speech recognition AND keyboard control for a BLIND person to CREATE
and output graphics and in turn these can be sound/speech enhanced BY A
BLIND person - . TGD Workshop AudioPIX can also handle 3D models, and you
can MOVE cars and trains for instance along a route within a built'
environment.

As Kaye said a day or two ago however, portability from one system to
another will prove a nuisance - and I do not know how we standardize at that
level at this time. I don't think I'll be around to see that happen. But in
some ways it does not matter - if blind people are getting access to
graphics - learning to read them - and enjoying them - its a lot better than
the present situation - virtual reality is NO GRAPHICS - libraries should be
a source/resource with TGD or TTT or whatever system available -
If the portability matter becomes an issue in itself - then we might as well
all pack up and go home. We are talking about equipment/software that is
around the price of a cheap computer and it will get cheaper still.

There is room for many systems - and like it or not - many will be
developed - and if they can also have applications more widely than in
vision impairment, so that they become a mainstream special education tool -
INCLUDING the tactile component - then we will have 'authors' coming out of
the woodwork because there will be a market for them - there will be a
"tactile graphicate and a tactile literate" community to gobble up their
publications.

Safe trip John

Don
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Gardner" <John.Gardner@xxxxxxxx>
To: <accessibleimage@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 1:25 PM
Subject: [accessibleimage] ViewPlus SVG audio tactile technology


> Hello listers.  Since Kaye has requested information on various systems, I
> guess it's time I piped up to describe the new SVG audio tactile
technology
> under development by ViewPlus.  I have personally been working on audio
> tactile technologies since the early 90's.  There never has been any
> question in my mind that the tactile/audio access method developed by our
> friend Don Parkes provides outstanding accessibility to graphical
> information.  The big problem is exactly what Kaye worries about - that
> authoring the combination of the tactile and computer information is
> frightening to most people.
>
> In 1996 I started a project whose object was to find a way to make
> mainstream graphics in some fashion that would be automatically
> accessible.  To shorten a long story, we adopted Scalable Vector Graphics
> while it was still under development as a web graphics language.  Nowadays
> SVG files can be exported by all major graphical authoring applications,
> and we've worked feverishly to develop a very user-friendly SVG editor
that
> would make possible my dream of accessible mainstream graphics.  Once the
> SVG file is made, a blind user can open it in a ViewPlus application, hit
> the print button to make a tactile copy on some nearby ViewPlus embosser,
> pop the tactile copy on a touch reader, and well, just read it just as Don
> Parkes showed how to do in the 1980's.  The tactile copy can be made
> elsewhere of course and supplied to the blind user along with the SVG
file,
> but that's not necessary if the user is on a network where she has access
> to the embosser.  Talk about easy!
>
> These new tools have recently been put into early beta test, and we hope
to
> introduce the technology commercially later this year.  Prototypes of the
> audio/tactile access have been shown at several trade shows and will be
> shown at more during the year.
>
> There are a number of technologies that provide a good user experience for
> the blind user.  Our SVG audio/tactile experience has both advantages and
> disadvantages compared to the technologies that have been described on
this
> list.  I believe that our SVG technology's great innovation is in the use
> of mainstream technologies for authoring and transmitting the
> information.  SVG is a mainstream graphics language.  ViewPlus will soon
be
> making it possible for a mainstream author to create graphical information
> that can be extremely usable by everybody.  We are trying our best to make
> it so easy that even mainstream authors will do it.  Until that halcyon
> time comes, we're trying equally hard to make it easy for transcribers to
> create and re-create graphical information EASILY.  We'll begin
> beta-testing the authoring/editing technology in June with a workshop at
> the Texas School for the Blind and VI.  I promise you that we'll continue
> development until making graphical information is easy and non-threatening
> for anybody who knows enough about computers to make something graphical
or
> who can scan in an image on paper.
>
> John
> PS I'm climbing on an airplane tomorrow and will check e-mail only
> occasionally for a couple of weeks.  If anybody has questions, I'm happy
to
> answer, but please be patient.
> John
>
> John A. Gardner
> Professor and Director, Science Access Project
> Department of Physics
> Oregon State University
> Corvallis, OR 97331
> tel: (541) 737 3278
> FAX: (541) 737 1683
> SAP URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu/
>
>
>

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