Tactile Line Drawings for Improved Shape Understanding in Blind and Visually Impaired Users
Tactile Line Drawings for Improved Shape Understanding in Blind and Visually Impaired Users ATHINA PANOTOPOULOU, Dartmouth College and Boston University, USA XIAOTING ZHANG and TAMMY QIU, Boston University, USA XING-DONG YANG, Dartmouth College, USA EMILY WHITING, Boston University, USA Fig. 1. We present a novel approach for generating tactile illustrations to improve shape understanding in blind individuals. (a) Physical 3D object (3D printed). (b) The input to our pipeline is a pre-partitioned object, colors indicate segmented parts. (c) A local camera is assigned to each part, with a master camera to combine the resulting multi-projection image. (d) Resulting stylized illustration. Cross-sections are used for texturing the interior of each part to communicate surface geometry. (e) We evaluated the technique in a user study with 20 blind participants. Tactile illustrations were fabricated using microcapsule paper. Members of the blind and visually impaired community rely heavily on Additional Key Words and Phrases: fabrication, design, accessibility, tactile tactile illustrations – raised line graphics on paper that are felt by hand – to shape perception, tactile images, non-photorealistic rendering understand geometric ideas in school textbooks, depict a story in children’s books, or conceptualize exhibits in museums. However, these illustrations ACM Reference Format: often fail to achieve their goals, in large part due to the lack of understanding Athina Panotopoulou, Xiaoting Zhang, Tammy Qiu, Xing-Dong Yang, and Emily in how 3D shapes can be represented in 2D projections. This paper describes Whiting. 2020. Tactile Line Drawings for Improved Shape Understanding a new technique to design tactile illustrations considering the needs of blind in Blind and Visually Impaired Users.
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