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Presenter(s)
John A. Gardner
Vladimir Bulatov
Holly Stowell
ViewPlus Technologies, Inc.,
1853 SW Airport Avenue
Corvallis,OR, 97333, USA
http://www.ViewPlus.com
ABSTRACT
The new ViewPlus IVEO Creator computer application enables authors easily to make graphical information that is universally usable. Simple graphics can be authored in IVEO Creator, but it's greatest power is its ability to import almost any format computer file and easily "make it accessible". The IVEO Viewer is a free reading application that displays IVEO files visually, in audio, and, with any major screenreader, in braille. Most people can use IVEO Viewer without additional hardware, but many people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties will find a touch screen or Tablet PC helpful. Blind people and people with other severe print disabilities may need an embossed copy placed on a touch pad or Tablet PC. Blind users can make a tactile copy with any ViewPlus embosser. Sighted people with severe print disabilities can make a color print embossed copy on the new ViewPlus EmPrint. IVEO files are Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) format and may be viewed visually with any SVG Viewer, so only those who need audio and/or braille feedback need IVEO Viewer for files made in IVEO Creator.
INTRODUCTION
Plain text in well-authored electronic documents of nearly any format is accessible to blind people and those with other print disabilities who know how to use a computer and screen reader. A great deal of common information is generally not presented as plain text however. Charts, diagrams, and graphs are common in business, scientific, and most professional literature. Maps and geographically-oriented data such as weather maps and complex census information would be virtually impossible to present in words. Until recently it has not been possible for authors of mainstream literature to present graphical information of these kinds in a format that could be accessed directly by people with print disabilities. Object-oriented graphical information can now be prepared using the new ViewPlus IVEO Creator, permitting authors easily to create or convert graphical information to a form usable by all people, including those with print disabilities. This new universal technology has been enabled by two recent developments - emergence of the mainstream SVG graphics language and introduction of the Tiger embossing technology by ViewPlus.
SVG (SVG 2005), is a new XML graphics language recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (Jackson 2002; Eisenberg 2002). The SVG format permits graphical objects to have title and description attributes, and these attributes are used to ensure that SVG graphical information can be accessed by people with print disabilities who cannot easily understand the visual representation. These attributes are not visible when the SVG graphic file is displayed in a conventional SVG viewer but can be displayed and, if desired, spoken by users of the IVEO Viewer application. The titles are displayed/spoken when selected with the mouse. Blind users can emboss a tactile copy of the SVG graphic, place it on a touch-sensitive pad, and select objects by pressing on the tactile copy.
This technique of enhancing tactile information with additional audio was pioneered by Parkes (Parkes 1988, 1991, 1995, 1998; Parkes and Brull 1997) and used extensively to provide graphical information to blind users (Loetzsch 1994; Loetzsch and Roeder 1996; Landau 2003). Properly used the tactile plus audio information is known to provide excellent access to blind users. Bulatov and Gardner (Bulatov and Gardner 1998; Gardner 2002; Gardner and Bulatov 1998, 2001, 2003, Gardner et al. 1997) explored the feasibility of using mainstream graphics languages accessed by the tactile/audio method. Their work contributed to ViewPlus' development of IVEO.
Scalable Vector Graphics
SVG development was begun in 1999 as a project of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C 2005) with major participation by Adobe, Apple, Canon, Corel, Hewlett-Packard, Macromedia, Microsoft, Kodak, Sun and many others. The SVG 1.0 recommendation (SVG 2001) was published in September 2001. Nearly all graphics authoring applications permit authors to export graphics as SVG, and there are numerous SVG-specific applications commercially available. SVG is a powerful language permitting animation and interactivity, but its most prevalent use is currently as a compact format for conveying static vector graphics on the web and in other electronic media. Its compactness and scalability are the major advantage of SVG over bit maps, currently the most common format for web and other electronic graphics. The inclusion of title and description attributes in the SVG specification along with other features promoting accessibility make SVG a nearly ideal language for creating accessible graphics. Accessibility is not automatic however. An author must include adequate titles for important graphic objects if an SVG file is to be accessible. Some chart or graph creation applications could include all titles and data so that the resulting SVG export could be automatically accessible. At this time, only IVEO Creator can make SVG files that are fully accessible with the IVEO Viewer application.
Tiger Embossing Technology
The Tiger embossing technology was developed within the Science Access Project (SAP 2005) at Oregon State University (Sahyun et al. 1998a, 1998b) and subsequently expanded and commercialized by ViewPlus (Gardner 2002, Gardner et al. 2002, Walsh and Gardner 2001). Tiger technology is capable of embossing with a resolution of 20 dots per inch or equivalently 400 dots per square inch, and with variable height dots. The ViewPlus embossers utilizing this technology include the Pro (100 Braille characters per second, paper widths to 16 inches), the Max (60 Braille characters per second, paper width to 11.5 inches), the Cub (50 Braille characters per second, paper widths to 8.5 inches), and the Cub Jr. (30 Braille characters per second, paper width to 8.5 inches). The new ViewPlus EmPrint uses HP ink jet technology and Tiger embossing technology to create high resolution color images that are also embossed. The Pro, Max, and Cub are intended primarily for blind people whereas the EmPrint is usable as well by sighted people with print and other disabilities who can absorb information better if presented in visual/tactile form. With IVEO, these people have triple mode (visual, tactile, audio) inputs to provide maximum flexibility in understanding graphical information.
All ViewPlus embossers are accessed by Windows applications through the normal print command just as any Windows printer. Graphics are reproduced normally as height-resolved gray-scale images in which black areas produce high dots, and light gray areas low dots. Text and graphics can co-exist and be embossed. Braille text will be embossed as Braille whereas standard fonts, e.g. Arial, Times Roman, emboss as graphic images. The variable dot height embossing capability and standard Windows printer interface for ViewPlus embossers permit users to create a tactile copy of most graphic images whose major features are tactually identifiable. Variable height dots are a critical necessity for blind users and many with severe print disabilities to access mainstream graphics. Tactual accessibility can be optimized by users through a variety of user commands that presently or in the near future include ability to change tactual contrast and brightness, to emboss outlines only, and to emboss colors as distinctive patterns.
Using the IVEO Products
The IVEO Creator V 1.0 permits authoring of simple diagrams. Version 2 will have considerably broader capabilities including the ability to author highly accessible forms and tables. Creator permits the user to import nearly any Windows file format and convert it to an accessible document. This capability includes not only the ability to import graphical information from MS Office and all current graphics applications but also scanning paper documents and importing bit map images that permit text to be automatically recognized. Authors can easily associate labels with graphical objects and correct any text that may have been incorrectly recognized. Creator saves documents in SVG format readable by all standard SVG viewers as well as the accessible IVEO Viewer, downloadable at no charge from the ViewPlus web site[VP 2005]
Blind and severely print-impaired users need a tactile or ink print image/tactile copy and some kind of position sensitive pad to gain full access to an accessible SVG document. Tactile copy may be created on any Viewplus embosser, and an embossed color image can be made on the new ViewPlus EmPrint. The ViewPlus IVEO touchpad is a convenient high-resolution device made especially for viewing with tactile copy. Once the touch-sensitive pad is installed, a blind user having access to a ViewPlus embosser needs only the accessible SVG file. The user opens the file in the IVEO Viewer, prints a copy on the Tiger embosser, and places the copy on the touch-sensitive pad. The software needs to be calibrated the first time it is used in order to assure that the tactile and screen images are precisely aligned. That calibration takes only a few seconds and never needs to be done again unless the print dimensions are changed.
Once the tactile image has been embossed and clamped onto the touchpad, the user can press on an object and hear the computer speak the name of that object. For example, on a map showing all the states of the US, a user can press on a state and hear its name. If the author has included additional information about that state in the optional description field, the user can hear the description. If the user wants to review information, she can switch to a text window and browse anything that has been spoken. This capability makes it possible for authors to include wordy descriptions. All spoken information is also readable in Braille using any common Braille screen reader.
The map of the US includes large and small states. While it may be possible to distinguish California, Oregon, Texas, Pennsylvania, and other large states on an 8.5x11 embossed image, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and other small states are nearly impossible to distinguish tactually. Fine details even of large states are also often not tactually distinguishable. Therefore a user will probably want to zoom the image to enlarge features of interest. There are a number of ways to do this. IVEO Viewer permits one to zoom in or out and to pan left, right, up, or down. These features are very useful for sighted users and are useful for fine adjustments by blind users. However the two most useful zoom features for blind users are the ability to select an object and zoom it to maximum size. For example, if a user is lucky enough to click on Rhode Island while browsing the full map, she can click on the "fit selection to window" item in the View menu. Alternatively a user may select the "zoom rectangle" menu item, then select two points that define the diagonally-opposite corners of a rectangle that will then zoom to maximum size permitted by the current window. One makes a copy of the zoomed image on the ViewPlus embosser, clamps the new copy on the touchpad, and then explores the zoomed image. One can always return to the full US map with the "fit to window" menu item.
When a user prints an image on the embosser, the computer saves the parameters of that image. If at a later time one wants to return to that particular image, one can place the tactile copy on the touch-sensitive pad and call back the original file with zoom parameters matching those of the tactile copy. The "Open from Bar Code" command in the file menu (hot key CTRL b)provides several ways to recall this file, and users may choose whichever they find most convenient. One may touch a tactile "bar code" on the image to recall the correct file and zoom display to the screen. The tactile copy has a braille identifier on the left margin that can be typed in instead of using the tactile bar code. If the tactile image is made on an EmPrint or Ink Pro embosser, a standard black ink bar code will be printed as well, and an inexpensive bar code reader can be used to input the information. In some cases, users may need to read graphics files in locations remote from a ViewPlus embosser. In such a case the reader would need the SVG files and embossed copies of all files. If several zoom views are needed, the specially recorded zoom information recalled by the bar code would also be needed. These can be prepared by the user and taken to another remote computer or can be prepared by another person.
Few mainstream graphical documents are made without some text, a title, or labels on some objects, or as scale factors on graphs and bar/column charts. Typical text made for mainstream use is far too small for a tactual image to be meaningful without being enlarged by a factor of three or more. Consequently, text in a SVG graphic is usually not even possible to identify as text with fingers alone. Nonetheless, when a text object is pressed, the text is spoken, so a blind user can "read" titles and text labels on graphics. A user option permits one to replace the 20 dpi text images (that are little more than tactual noise) as special "text patterns" that are more readily identifiable. These text and graphics user options provide an experienced blind user with tools that can make almost any IVEO image usable.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant supporting development of EmPrint, the IVEO touchpad, and the IVEO Viewer. They thank the National Science Foundation for a SBIR grant supporting development of the IVEO Creator.
References
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