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Automated tactile graphics translation: in the field

Published: 15 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

We address the practical problem of automating the process of translating figures from mathematics, science, and engineering textbooks to a tactile form suitable for blind students. The Tactile Graphics Assistant (TGA) and accompanying workflow is described. Components of the TGA that identify text and replace it with Braille use machine learning, computational geometry, and optimization algorithms. We followed through with the ideas in our 2005 paper by creating a more detailed workflow, translating actual images, and analyzing the translation time. Our experience in translating more than 2,300 figures from 4 textbooks demonstrates that figures can be translated in ten minutes or less of human time on average. We describe our experience with training tactile graphics specialists to use the new TGA technology.

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cover image ACM Conferences
Assets '07: Proceedings of the 9th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
October 2007
282 pages
ISBN:9781595935731
DOI:10.1145/1296843
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 15 October 2007

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Author Tags

  1. accessibility
  2. braille
  3. disability
  4. image processing
  5. machine learning
  6. tactile graphics
  7. user study

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  • (2023)Designing While Blind: Nonvisual Tools and Inclusive Workflows for Tactile Graphic CreationProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3614546(1-8)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
  • (2023)A11yBoard: Making Digital Artboards Accessible to Blind and Low-Vision UsersProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580655(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Tactile Materials in Practice: Understanding the Experiences of Teachers of the Visually ImpairedACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/350836415:3(1-34)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2022
  • (2022)How accessible is my visualization? Evaluating visualization accessibility with ChartabilityComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1452241:3(57-70)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2022
  • (2022)Audio-Tactile Reader (ATR): Interaction Concepts for Students with Blindness to Explore Digital STEM Documents on a 2D Haptic Device2022 IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS)10.1109/HAPTICS52432.2022.9765568(1-6)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
  • (2021)A Systematic Literature Review on the Automatic Creation of Tactile Graphics for the Blind and Visually ImpairedProcesses10.3390/pr91017269:10(1726)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2021
  • (2021)”It’s Just Everything Outside of the IDE that’s the Problem”:Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445090(1-12)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
  • (2021)Towards Automatic Interpretation Of Statistical Graphs For The Visually Impaired2021 9th International Conference in Software Engineering Research and Innovation (CONISOFT)10.1109/CONISOFT52520.2021.00033(180-188)Online publication date: Oct-2021
  • (2021)Towards Assisting the Visually Impaired: A Review on Techniques for Decoding the Visual Data From Chart ImagesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2021.30692059(52926-52943)Online publication date: 2021
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