MEMORANDUM
To: Members And Friends
NFB R&D Committee
From: T. V. Cranmer, Chairman
Subject: Illustrations and photos
Date: November 26, 1994
I read the Braille version of Science News every week. A regular
column named "Books" is devoted to brief reviews of recent
publications pertaining to some aspect of science. I've been
reading this column for several years. Each review concludes with
the number of pages, color illustrations, B&W illustrations, (or
both) the price and ordering information. I can't help but wonder
how much essential information is contained in the illustrations,
and how much is in the text. I fear that without the
illustrations, many books would loose so much information that they
would be of little or no use to a blind student.
Many technical manuals are rendered useless by showing key caps
instead of using key names. In these manuals you find instructions
like "Press the [picture] key."
The publishing industry used illustrations sparingly, and with good
taste and judgment, during the early decades of this century. Then
technologies were developed that made it easy to include drawings
and photographs for no better purpose than to enhance the visual
appeal of books and magazines.
I recently read that textbooks for young children frequently
include as many pages with pictures as there are pages of printed
text.
This emphasis on illustrations, photos and other visual tools for
transmitting information has become a major problem in education of
blind people. It can no longer be ignored. We, too, must develop
technologies capable of extracting information from a visual
presentation and reformatting that information in a tactile format.
This is a major challenge confronting all of us. We will have to
break the problem down to small pieces, and solve each in turn. At
some point, we can assemble the separate solutions into a complete
methodology that meets the needs of the blind student.
We are beginning to work on pieces of the problem. Our scientific
calculator with tactile graphing capability, directed by Dr.
Abraham Nemeth with assistance by Mr. John Miller, is slowly taking
shape. If there is sufficient progress to warrant a report, it
could be included in our meeting at the National Center for the
Blind on January 28, 1995.
Mr. Jaquiss will have samples of one or more tactile image
production methods for a show-and-tell at our January meeting.
I have enlisted the help of Mr. John Monarch, a volunteer engineer,
to explore software for editing scanned images and graphics taken
from a CD-ROM library, to make modifications of scale, resolution
and detail required for tactile replication.
I have asked Mr. Monarch to use Corel draw to edit a photo of a
guitar, piano, and a human bust. In each case, the image will be
enlarged to fill a 8 inch by 11 inch page. All of the "fill" areas
will be removed, leaving outlines of the figure and essential
details. In the case of the bust, the head and shoulders would be
shown as a outline drawing with separate drawings of eyes, nose,
mouth et cetera, appropriately positioned within the sketch.
Mr. Monarch's work will result in a digital file in a standard
format for driving a laser printer or numerically controlled
embosser. Laser prints and the digital files will be sent to Mr.
Jaquiss for use in his pursuit of embossing machines. We can
expect to see capsule paper replicates of these materials in
January.
Thanks to everyone that has commented on the Braille Plotter idea.
We need more ideas on the whole issue of visuals and how to deal
with them when producing materials for the blind. Brain storming
here could help with decisions that could be made in January.
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