0.2 Phy1004: manual creation of tactile graphics  (Page 6/6)

The text values in the right-hand column in Figure 3 are the text values that you would read if all of the text on the image were embossed inBraille. However, embossing all of that text in Braille would make your assistant's job much more difficult. Therefore, in the interest ofsimplicity, my approach will be to present the text for an individual image as shown in Figure 3, and to provide Braille key characters on the images that you can use to tie the text to the image.

On the other hand

If your assistant is good at manually embossing with Braille and can spare the time to do so, there is no reason that she can't simply emboss Braille rightover the printed text. Then, except for keys that refer to objects such as the key labeled "M" in Figure 2 , you and your assistant can simply ignore the keys.

The intended operational mode

The intended operational mode is for you to locate an object of interest on the embossed image, locate the Braille key associated with thatobject, and then come back to Figure 3 to read the text associated with that object.

A vector diagram

Once you begin exploring the embossed image from the file named 1.svg by touch, you will discover that there are several objects on the image that consist of heavy straight lines witharrow heads. Those objects are what we will refer to as vectors in subsequent modules.

This diagram includes a vertical wall on the left side of the image. A rectangular beam protrudes horizontally from the wall towards the righta little below the vertical center of the image. A supporting cable is attachedto the right end of the beam at an angle of 30 degrees and attaches back to the wall above the point where the beam is attached to the wall.

The image shows the vectors associated with various forces in the wall-beam-cable configuration along with the beam and the cable in thebackground. This will be a common theme throughout this collection. A picture of something will be presented in the background and vectors will be shown in theforeground.

Very light gray shading

Your assistant will note that I represented the wall and the beam with a very light gray shading and a few widely-spaced dots along the edges. I alsorepresented the cable as a dashed line.

I'm not sure of the best way to emboss the beam and the wall. One approach would be tosimply use the tracing wheel and emboss the outline of the beam and the wall. However, I'm concerned that the addition of the horizontal andvertical lines required to do that would make it more difficult for you to discern the more important information, which is thelocation and direction of each vector.

You and your assistant will probably need to discuss this issue and determine what works best for you in terms of identifying the location and shape of thebeam and the wall. Ideally, you will come up with a solution that can be applied to the background pictures in other images in future modules.

One option might be to print two copies of the file and ask your assistant to emboss only the outer frame and the background picture in one, and to embosseverything but the background picture in the other.

If you come up with a really good idea in this regard, I would like to hear what it is so that I can pass it along to otherstudents.

Resources

I will publish a module containing consolidated links to resources on my Connexions web page and will update and add to the list as additional modulesin this collection are published.

Miscellaneous

This section contains a variety of miscellaneous information.

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