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Presenter(s)
Steven Landau
Touch Graphics, Ind.
330 West 38 Street Suite 1204
New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-375-6341
Fax: 646-452-4211
Email: sl@touchgraphics.com
L. Penny Rosenblum
Touch Graphics, Inc. / University of Arizona
PO Box 210069, Dept. of SERSP
Tucson, AZ 85721-0069
Phone: 520-621-1223
Fax: 520-621-3821
Email: pr@touchgraphics.com
Touch Graphics, Inc, under funding from a Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research grant through US Dept. of Education, is carrying out research surrounding the development of an Authoring Tool that allows teachers and others to produce interactive, audio-tactile materials for use by students who are blind or visually impaired. The Authoring Tool is an application for the Talking Tactile Tablet, or TTT, a low-cost computer peripheral device that acts as a "viewer" for tactile graphic sheets. With the TTT system, users can mount a variety of raised-line and textured (tactile) sheets on the device, and explore them with their fingers and hands. Then, they can press down to hear specific audio information about the region or object that they touched. Touch Graphics has produced a library of sophisticated applications for the TTT; however, in discussions with educators, the company learned that teachers want to have the ability to make their own one-off audio tactile pictures for use in orientation and mobility training and for other subjects such as math, science, and social studies. In response to this expression of interest, the Touch Graphics has created the TTT Authoring Tool, with which non-programmers can create their own tactile images using a variety of methods and then assign sounds to parts of the drawing by recording their own voice, or by typing in words or phrases to be played back when students press on various parts of the tactile drawing..
As part of the R & D effort, the Company ran a contest, for which teachers and others in the US and around the world submitted proposals for audio-tactile projects they wanted to carry out using the Authoring Tool and Talking Tactile Tablet. Almost 200 entries were received, and through a multi-round judging process, 50 of these were selected as winners. The winning received a free TTT and the Authoring Tool software; in exchange, they agreed to provide feedback to the research team. Their feedback provides important information on how individual authors choose to work with the system, and with what results. Findings from this process will be used to refine the system prior to commercial release in 2005.
During the session, the Steven Landau, Principal Investigator for Touch Graphics, and L. Penny Rosenblum of the University of Arizona College of Education, and Coordinator of the Teacher Design Collaborative (a group of educators around the US who participated as project advisors and judges in the contest) will present a discussion and demonstration of how the Authoring Tool system works. They will also describe the kinds of proposals that were submitted in the course of the contest, and will show examples of materials developed by some of the winners. Data from questionnaires completed by the winners will be shared. The presenters will discuss activities occurring during the second year of the research project.
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