[accessibleimage] articles

 Hi,
A few articles.
Nasas and NFBs summer camp, Tactile Auio Graphics in the
news in India,an environmental education and arts-based
holiday centre in Wales, Rodin exhibition in Utica, New York
and MicroScribe from Immersion, a haptic tracing device that
one can draw over surfaces with and transfers the point
coordinates to the computer and then. I'm thinking this
could perhaps have possibilities a device used by blind as a
drawing device to develop computer files, a 3D digitilizer.
What do you think?

Regards,
Lisa

Articles follow links.
Nasa/NFB                 
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/9417744.htm

India
http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004/01-15Jun04-Print-Edition/011506200474.htm

Wales

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14538911&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=prince-celebrates--inspirational-centre-name_page.html

Rodin
http://www.uticaod.com/archive/2004/08/19/news/5647.html

Microscribe
http://www.immersion.com/digitizer/products/microscribe_g2.php

Posted on Mon, Aug. 16, 2004
Blind Students to Launch NASA Rocket
ALEX DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press

BALTIMORE - A dozen blind students from across the United
States are at a summer camp this week working on a project
most don't associate with the visually impaired - launching
a NASA rocket.

The students are designing and preparing the rocket's
payload at the National Federation of the  Blind's Jernigan
Institute in Baltimore. On Thursday, they will launch their
rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's
Eastern Shore.

The camp is part of an effort to encourage the blind to
become involved in the sciences and to develop alternative
methods to teach the  estimated 100,000 blind and visually
impaired students in the United States.

For example, on Tuesday the students will also operate a
telescope outfitted with a device that  makes printouts with
raised features that can be felt, said Mark Riccobono,
manager of  education programs for the NFB's Jernigan
Institute.

 "Astronomy isn't thought of as something blind people can
do, but the images, stars in space for example, are
typically high contrast so making them into a tactile format
is fairly simple,"  Riccobono said.
 
 "Part of what we're trying to reinforce here is if they can
imagine it, they can do whatever they  want in science. They
are not limited by what society thinks."  Students applied
for the camp and were chosen based on their grades, skills,
written essays  and other criteria, Riccobono said.

At the camp, they have been split into three teams that will
be responsible for the rocket's  trajectory, payload and
launch operations.

"We're responsible for the launch, and what happens happens.
If we mess it up, it's our fault,"  said camp participant
Hoby Wedler, 17, of Petaluma, Calif.

The payload consists of sensors that will measure light,
temperature, pressure and speed. The  data from the sensors
will be transmitted back during flight to the ground, where
it will be  analyzed by the students.

The teaching process at the camp is tailored to the blind,
using models and teaching tools students can hold and
examine with their hands.

A bicycle pump, for example, was used to fill an empty
two-liter soda bottle with air, allowing the students to
feel and hear how escaping gas powers a rocket. On real
rockets, fuel is needed to create the escaping gas, Phil
Eberspeaker, chief of the sounding rockets program at 
Wallops Island, told the students during class Monday.

"What happens when I convert a solid or a liquid to a gas?,"
Eberspeaker asked.

"It expands?" one student answered.   
 "That's right. Newton says when gas moves in one direction,
the rocket moves in another,"
Eberspeaker told the students.

Wooden dowels, meanwhile, were handed out Monday to the
students, who balanced them on their fingers to find the
center of gravity. A nail was then taped to the end, and
they found the new center of gravity - a demonstration of
how the motors and payload change the center of gravity of a
rocket. There is currently no single source for such
materials in the U.S. and NFB officials hope the educational
skills developed during the camp will also become part of a
clearinghouse of adaptive educational resources for
teachers.

"This is a good way to expose students and their parents and
the public to the fact that there's no boundary, it's all in
your head, there's nothing stopping them," Eberspeaker said
later.

"All it takes is your brain and creativity."

Wedler said he has always been interested in science and
decided to go the camp because he wanted to see "what these
people who have been doing this all their lives have to
say."

"This is something I feel I can do, but this is such a
visual world and I've thought is it worth it? I'm starting
to think it is worth it."
     ---__

  On the Net: The National Federation of the Blind -
www.nfb.org.



Computer lab in AMU blind school 

 Aligarh: Computer Training and Machine
Aided Reading Unit was inaugurated on
May 18 by the AMU VC Naseem Ahmad at
 its Ahmadi School for Blind. The unit, a  brainchild of Dr.
Qazi Mazhar Ali, director
 of the Computer Centre at AMU, is equipped with many
softwares and  hardwares which removes the dependence
 of blind students on sighted readers and   writers. A
special scanning device from Germany called ?Poet? is part
of the unit?s hardware. It reads books through a synthesized
voice and has the memory to store 0.5 million pages in
speech and  allows it to transfer on audio cassette, CD and
pen-drive. A combination of
 Win-Braille and Optical Brain Recognition (OBR) software
from Czechoslovakia  facilitates to transfer
manually-written Braille into Computer-Braille files. The
computer can convert these files into ordinary English text
files. Thus assignments of blind students can now be checked
by a sighted teacher without
 knowing Braille. 

A Braille printer from Sweden attached to the Computer of
the Unit works as a  Braille minipress to print teaching
material, books, question papers or to print   multiple
copies of Braille books in English, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic etc.
So far it was difficult to provide graphic facilities to
blind students. Now the graphic Braille  permits to print
art work stored in computer. This has made possible to teach
geometry, geographical maps, fine art etc to blind students.
For this work the  unit acquired Tactile Graphic Display
software from Australia. Microsoft Window and other popular
software such as MS Office and Excl can now be used by blind
students in this Unit through a software. called Job Access
With Speech  (JAWS) developed by a blind for blinds in USA.
JAWS guides its user through synthesized voice for each
command and the keys pressed. The typing on the  keyboard of
a computer will be taught in the Unit through a Talking
Typing
Teacher software developed in Canada that has 41 lessons and
many talking  typing games. It is the first such unit in
northern India with the exception of Delhi.  

The Ahmadi School for the Blind was inaugurated on 27
November 1927 by
 William Marris, Governor of U.P. Boarding and lodging for
the student is free. 




 Wales
 Prince celebrates inspirational centre 
 Aug 17 2004
 Duncan Higgitt, The Western Mail

 THE Prince of Wales has presented the first Queen's Award
for  sustainable development ever to be given in this
country.

 The award went to the Clynfyw Countryside Centre, an
 environmental education and arts-based holiday centre in
Pembrokeshire which includes facilities for people with
 disabilities including a tactile sculpture trail that can
open up a sensory world for blind visitors.

The ground-breaking project makes the woods more accessible
 to those with sight, hearing and physical difficulties - as
well as pioneering new ways for farms to provide new jobs
and
 opportunities in rural Wales.
The award was made for the centre's open to all philosophy,
green business practices and improved woodland access.
Prince Charles said Clybfyw was a "splendid example of how a
 truly sustainable approach to land, trees and people can be
managed".

He said his visit had been happy and memorable and added
 that the centre was "an inspiration".
 The award came as a £105,000 project paid for by Cydcoed -
Woods for All, the £16m Forestry Commission Wales grant
programme funded by the European Union and Welsh
 Assembly Government at Clynfyw reaches its completion.
 The Cydcoed grant also funded the conversion of stables
into
 an interpretation centre and a wood-fuelled central heating
  system which is fed by timber from the 200-acre organic
farm.
Jim Bowen, Clynfyw's manager said, "This award has given us
all a huge boost, encouraging us to continue to raise our
  environmental standards and tourism practices, as well as
meeting the needs of those who visit and support us.

 "We are by no means the finished item but receiving this
 award, as recognition of all the centre's hard work, is
very
flattering, but we know we would not be here without the
help
we have had from a huge number of people and agencies."
 The new interpretation centre will be open to the public
and to
 users of the centre. The Cydcoed project has created one
and
  a half new full time jobs in an area which suffers from
high
 unemployment.

 Dominic Driver of Cydcoed said, "We're really proud that
this
 imaginative project has won a Queen's Award, and to have
 been able to play a part in making that happen.

 "This is the second of our projects in Pembrokeshire to be
part
 of an award-winning programme this summer. Grove School in
Pembroke has also won the Forestry Commission Wales South
Wales Award for Better Woodlands and is now competing for
 the national title."
                                    «



Hands-on experience
Students use hands to 'see' legendary artist's works
Thu, Aug 19, 2004

 By JESSICA RYEN
Observer-Dispatch 

 UTICA -- Three visually impaired students had the
opportunity to  experience the Rodin exhibit at
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute
in a way that has never been done before. 

 Normally, no one is allowed to touch the 19th-century
sculptures that are being displayed in the Museum of Art.  
The pieces are a part of a traveling  exhibit brought in by
the Iris & Gerald    B. Cantor Foundation and will be at the
museum until Sunday, Oct. 3. 

Auguste Rodin is recognized as being one of the first
artists to consider a fragment of the human form as a work
of art. 

 With the aid of latex gloves, Brigitte  Radzisz, 11; Zack
Sullivan, 11; and  Evan Tullock, 15; were permitted to feel
the sculptures
Wednesday afternoon so that they may be able to "see" what
others see. 

Museum docents led the children around the building in what
was referred to as a "touch tour." As  they stopped at each
statue, the docent would guide the student's hand and
explain what they were   Ricky Doolittle took Radzisz
upstairs to let her compare the differences between Rodin
and other  artists. As Radzisz's hands grazed the sculpture
of William H. Rinehart's "Sleeping Children," Doolittle asks
Radzisz what she felt. 

 "A hand!" squealed Radzisz, of Whitesboro. "It's a
person!"   Downstairs, docent Jean Mahon was walking with
Tullock, from Ilion. 
"My mom would always drag me to them," Tullock said when
asked if he had been to a museum  before. "I've always had
vision problems and I never really got to see any of it." 

 Tullock's technology instructor, Cindy Venettozzi, said
that touching the objects made them seem more real, and not
like a blob. "This is a whole new thing for the docents and
our department," said April Oswald, the museum's education
director. "This is an audience who normally
wouldn't think of coming here." 

 Wednesday's tour was the third in a series of seven which
will continue Tuesday and Wednesday. 

 The docents were trained in part by Jim Marscher, an
orientation and mobility specialist for the Central
Association for the Blind. 

 Doolittle explained how Marscher and one of his colleagues
took the docents on different tours as if  they were blind,
to explain how to act with people who had varying degrees of
vision impairment. 

 For example, Radzisz needed to understand the parts of the
whole -- if she got too far away from an object, it looked
blurry to her. If she was up too close, she couldn't see the
whole thing, Marscher said. 

Marscher listened in on conversations to make sure the
docents were utilizing the information they learned in last
week's training. 

 "I was very impressed with the follow-through," Marscher
said. "All the docents did an excellent job on melding the
information we had given them with the information about the
sculptures  themselves, in ways the children could
understand them.   "We are hoping this is the beginning of a
relationship," Marscher continued. "If we kindle an
artistic   interest, maybe there is a blind artist out there
we don't know about." 

Contact Jessica Ryen at jryen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

 EXHIBITION DETAILS 

What: "Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession" is a free exhibition
open to the public at the  Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts
Institute Museum of Art on
Genesee Street in Utica. 

 Guided tours: Available by contacting the museum. Advanced
registration is required for some  programs. 
 Information: 797-0000, ext. 2158. 

 Exhibition ends Sunday, Oct. 3. 
Auguste Rodin is recognized as being one of the first
artists to consider a fragment of the human
form as a work of art. 



MicroScribe® G2 

MicroScribe® G2 is an accurate, affordable 3D digitizing
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 See an online MicroScribe demo  The award-winning
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The counterbalanced mechanical arm is equipped with
precision  bearings for smooth, effortless manipulation.
Each joint uses digital
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noise and  interference. It all makes for a versatile system
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work in almost any environment and be used with objects of
any material. With  accuracy of up to 0.009", the
MicroScribe G2 system is
truly the ultimate 3D digitizer.

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